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Nasa revives 'weird life forms' trapped inside crystals for 60,000 years
- niuzeta 9y agoI think I have seen enough Hollywood B movies to see where this is going.
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- mattkevan 9y agoThat headline sounds like the plot of some Roger Corman-style B-movie. Why were they trapped in the first place? And is it a good idea to let them out?
- tyingq 9y agoThe photo even seems roughly like "The Thing"...just crystals instead of ice.
- twic 9y agoYes, this is the famous aphorism of Zal-Tar's Fence: > There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a crystal or jewel erected to contain an ancient being. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the danger this being poses; let us release it." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don’t see the danger, I certainly won’t let you release it. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the danger, I may allow you to release it."
- blfr 9y agoZal-Tar's? It's Chesterton's fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoIt's been a while, but I don't recall Chesterton mentioning "a crystal or jewel erected to contain an ancient being".
- twic 9y agoThat's the joke.
- dEnigma 9y agoPenelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years exploring Mexico's Naica Mine in Chihuahua looking for extremophiles, which contain caves as large as cathedrals. Is it just because English isn't my first language, or does that sentence sound weird to native speakers too? Like the extremophiles contain "caves as large as cathedrals"
- berberous 9y agoNative speaker. Agree that it is poorly written.
- cstejerean 9y agoThat sentence does sound weird, it's not just you, and using of contain rather than contains doesn't help either. If it was referring to the Naica Mine it should have been "which contains caves ...".
- Turing_Machine 9y agoIt would also be clearer if "looking for extremophiles" were moved to an earlier position in the sentence. Here's how I would word it: Penelope Boston, the director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and her team have spent years looking for extremophiles in the Naica Mine. The mine, located in Chihuahua, Mexico, contains caves as large as cathedrals.
- klibertp 9y agoThis is tangential at best, but a) I've been thinking about it for some time and b) someone reading this thread may actually know: why are there differences in punctuation rules between languages? Comma placement before certain words in a particular situation, hyphen-related rules, quoting, and so on - there may be differences even within a single language, and differences between languages are even bigger. How come? The punctuation - or more specifically, the commas, their placement or absence in certain places - is the last thorn my brain hurts over when reading and writing English. I read a sentence, and I feel like I'd trip each time I see a comma where there shouldn't be any. Like walking a rocky road or something.
- skywal_l 9y agoWhat could go wrong?
- simplyluke 9y agoNot nearly as much as you're implying
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- tyingq 9y agoThe storyline, and even the first picture do mirror a lot of doomsday/virus/zombie/etc plots. I'm sure that occurs to just about everyone that reads it. A pointer to some credible source as to why it's not dangerous might be interesting. Even being somewhat reasonable, scary things like prions do exist.
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- aruggirello 9y agoAt the bottom of the article it briefly mentions bringing back stuff from other planets, and that stuff could include extremophile-like life: "It is assumed that such life would be hardy - to survive the trip to Earth; not easy - and precautions taken would provide a very high degree of containment." So yeah, what could go wrong?
- andai 9y agoSince they thrive on inorganic matter, we might be able to harness some of them to deal with electronic waste :)
- freeflight 9y agoSounds like the solution to the gray goo end-of-the-world scenario: Have the bacteria eat the gray goo. Tho, we'd then probably end up with an uncontrollable green goo problem ;)
- siculars 9y agoClearly they didn't see the movie Life.
- ksikka 9y agoDisappointed - not much on why these life forms are "weird".
- andai 9y agoThey thrive in an environment devoid of organic matter!
- gus_massa 9y agoI agree. The article is not very clear, but IIUC they only found some bacteria and some archaea. Some of them are weird because they live in place that are very hot or because they get their energy from "weird" sources. Instead of burning something like sugar with the oxygen of the air they use other compounds. They may burn ferrous iron or sulfur. There are many possibilities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithotroph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithotroph They are very common underground. IIRC the mass of all the "weird" extremophiles is bigger that the mass of the usual life forms that we usually meet.
- dzhiurgis 9y agoSo they found bacteria and archae?
- carapace 9y agoAs an aside, I find it deeply, poetically beautiful that the world has giant crystal caves.
- fapjacks 9y agoYou can buy crystals from this cave on eBay for really cheap. I've got one in my "weird rock" collection.
- Karrot_Kream 9y agoWhat string would I search for on eBay?
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- joelbugarini 9y agoNaica Mine is a beautiful place, wish I could be inside some day. I've read that is not accessible to public in general due to constant water flow that has to be drained and a very high humidity.
- kjs3 9y agoIt also has the slight issue that the ambient temperature is around 140F.
- mempko 9y agoMore evidence that life could possibly survive traveling through space.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoFascinating that the organisms can remain viable in geo-preservation mode. When growing up in Vegas we used to go swimming in some of the side canyons the lake had filled. And once while swimming we found some gypsum crystals that were like 1:100th scale models of the ones in the cave (I think the largest were about 5" long and maybe an inch in diameter.) we carried a couple of home and for a fairly long time they sat as table decorations. I never even imagined they could have something inside of them like that. Definitely solid horror movie material :-)
- sshanky 9y agoI wonder what the frequency of caves like this might be, and how likely they are to ever be found. Are they typically indicated by some evidence or indicators on the surface, or might there be unthinkable quantities scattered all over the globe?
- ambrop7 9y agoNo pictures (of lifeforms)?
- m3kw9 9y agoMaybe one of those flying alien viruses from Alien: Covenent will come out
- Grangar 9y agoHey, spoilers!
- whatnotests 9y agoGeneral Zod.
- scrumper 9y agoWhat is the researcher wearing in the first photograph? It looks like a lead smock for radiation protection, but those bags have gaps between them so that doesn't seem likely. Sample containers?