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misleading title, they did not wait, wait means something completely different they ground the rock up, placed it in a tube, put it in a drawer, then took it o
by glofish 6y ago
misleading title, they did not wait, wait means something completely different
they ground the rock up, placed it in a tube, put it in a drawer, then took it out two years later and performed some measurements
the minerals turned out to be less jagged than sterile minerals kept for the same amount of time. The scientists concluded that the bacteria ate the rock by stripping electrons.
Now a possible alternative explanation (not explored by the journalist) is that the bacteria lived off the remaining organic materials in the rock and the byproduct of their life were substances that dulled the crystals.
- dmurray 6y agoThe alternative explanation is that they mined the rock for food? That's just as interesting.
- mattkrause 6y agoI think that's actually the result! I read @glofish's proposal as suggesting that bacterial excretions(?) indiscriminately dissolve the rock. The paper (linked above) does try to address this in a few ways. Iron, the putative energy source, is specifically concentrated on the surface of the inoculated samples--but other metals aren't. The bacteria are also mostly found on the mineral edges. They discuss this near Figure 5/6 and in the supplement.
- fsckboy 6y agoin a thread about misleading wording... usually "mining rock" means extracting rock, while "mining a mountain" means extracting minerals from the mountain. Your "mined the rock" means the latter sense of the word mine. and as to the original "misleading title" claim, the way they meant the word wait was "scientists were willing to conduct a 2 year experiement because the data was worth the wait"
- glofish 6y agono what I meant is that during the process of grinding up the rock they mixed in the organic matter from the surface of the rock into the dust itself, the bacteria lived off that substance.
- phyzome 6y ago"then took it out two years later" sure sounds like waiting to me.
- Waterluvian 6y agoIt's just a language ambiguity. Nobody's wrong here. I first read it as, "they waited two years before they began investigating the topic."
- Youden 6y agoHere are the relevant senses of the word from OED: - "To remain in a place, defer one's departure until something happens." - "colloquial. to wait about: to linger expectantly, ‘hang about’ where something is likely to happen. Also (chiefly U.S.) to wait around." - "To defer action until some event has taken place; also with infinitive, to delay to do something." I think there's ambiguity in what's being awaited: - I think your parent comment assumes the scientists are awaiting a result - I think you assume the scientists are waiting for some mount of time to pass FWIW, when reading a headline, I'd definitely assume the first. "Scientists did other stuff for 2 years while a sample sat around" wouldn't be newsworthy enough to put in a headline. I think the headline was simply worded in a way that emphasises excitement over clarity. A clearer headline would be "Scientists conducted a two and a half year experiment to [...]".
- throwaway_jobs 6y ago> Now a possible alternative explanation (not explored by the journalist) is that the bacteria lived off the remaining organic materials in the rock and the byproduct of their life were substances that dulled the crystals. Is that your hypothesis or from an actual paper about the study? I think this makes a lot of sense, because if there wasn’t left over organic material the bacteria could “eat” and was simply about bacteria stripping electrons from inanimate matter...I’m left wondering why the bacteria wouldn’t indiscriminately strip electrons including from say the test tube itself?