3 ms·

"What could go wrong?"

NegativeLatency 5y ago
> They’ve also existed for at least 35m years – and can be found today in freshwater lakes, ponds, streams and moist terrestrial habitats such as moss, lichen, tree bark and soil. Imagine how they’d feel about humans coming in and messing stuff up.
- fctorial 5y ago
  How do they know that the sample wasn't contaminated?
  - bluenose69 5y ago
    The paper^[1] discusses metagenomic information that suggests the results are not the subject of contamination: > As only one pair of reads was found in the metagenome, the analyzed fragment was covered just once, necessarily capturing one gene variant. These results strongly suggest that the isolate originated from the permafrost layer and not sample contamination 1. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00624-2 https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)...
xaduha 5y ago
It's thawing out with or without people being there, it's just a matter of time. Do you really think ex-permafrost shouldn't be studied? Hopefully with pandemic still ongoing there will be more precautions, that's all.
agilob 5y ago
What could go wrong with what? They "just" found some units in permafrost and woke them up. >They’ve also existed for at least 35m years – and can be found today in freshwater lakes, ponds, streams and moist terrestrial habitats such as moss, lichen, tree bark and soil. They haven't found a new specie, they found frozen units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bdelloidea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bdelloidea
- viraptor 5y ago
  Frozen units which skipped the last 24k years of evolution. Even if that species exists today, "what could go wrong" could include some small behaviour change which current environment can't counteract.
  - robofanatic 5y ago
    I always wonder about this while watching movies like Jurassic Park. How could a T-Rex even survive in the current environment after skipping millions of years of evolution. Were they even breathing the same air?
    - edgyquant 5y ago
      No iirc the air back then had way more oxygen and way more carbon dioxide which allowed for a warmer climate and the animals/plants to grow larger. Same with the ancient giant insects, their bodies would not allow them to survive today on such little oxygen which is why insects are all tiny today.

> They’ve also existed for at least 35m years – and can be found today in freshwater lakes, ponds, streams and moist terrestrial habitats such as moss, lichen, tree bark and soil. Imagine how they’d feel about humans coming in and messing stuff up.

fctorial 5y ago
How do they know that the sample wasn't contaminated?
- bluenose69 5y ago
  The paper^[1] discusses metagenomic information that suggests the results are not the subject of contamination: > As only one pair of reads was found in the metagenome, the analyzed fragment was covered just once, necessarily capturing one gene variant. These results strongly suggest that the isolate originated from the permafrost layer and not sample contamination 1. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00624-2 https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)...

xaduha 5y ago

It's thawing out with or without people being there, it's just a matter of time. Do you really think ex-permafrost shouldn't be studied? Hopefully with pandemic still ongoing there will be more precautions, that's all.

agilob 5y ago

What could go wrong with what? They "just" found some units in permafrost and woke them up. >They’ve also existed for at least 35m years – and can be found today in freshwater lakes, ponds, streams and moist terrestrial habitats such as moss, lichen, tree bark and soil. They haven't found a new specie, they found frozen units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bdelloidea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bdelloidea

viraptor 5y ago
Frozen units which skipped the last 24k years of evolution. Even if that species exists today, "what could go wrong" could include some small behaviour change which current environment can't counteract.
- robofanatic 5y ago
  I always wonder about this while watching movies like Jurassic Park. How could a T-Rex even survive in the current environment after skipping millions of years of evolution. Were they even breathing the same air?
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    No iirc the air back then had way more oxygen and way more carbon dioxide which allowed for a warmer climate and the animals/plants to grow larger. Same with the ancient giant insects, their bodies would not allow them to survive today on such little oxygen which is why insects are all tiny today.