NASA Revives 60K Year Old Microbes

I can see no way this could possibly go wrong.

So is there liquid water inside these crystals? Isn't that the most important requirement for life as we know it? I have addresses several time the idea of life existing but in a state (whether permanent or temporary) where we might not detect it. Would the same equipment/sensors we use to detect life on other planets/moons even detect this life inside these crystals right here on earth? So who is to say there couldn't be life under just about any circumstances?

I don't worry about sixty millennia old microbes posing a modern day health threat.

Microbes that humans may have no immunity against?

Activating microbes that humanity hasn't seen in 60,000 years? If ever?



I'll be in the bunker.

Shit. I'm in Florida. No bunkers. Oh well, I guess I'll get with the new paradigm.

Conversely, the microbes would have no keys developed to attack humans either.

Begun the microbe wars---

*coughs* *gasps* *dies*

The only way that would happen is if the microbes had never encountered humans and didn't infect any of our primate cousins. Given that modern humans were around for 150K years before these things were encased, they might very well have. Microbes travel well on the winds, and there's been monkeys in the Americas for at least 26 million years, it could very well be something that could infect us.

Exactly - modern humans have been around for at least 100,000 years no question about it. I say we quarantine the crystals and a few humans of varying races, ages, and ethnicities (definitely some with neanderthal/denisovan DNA like my white ass) together and see what happens! Nothing ventured, nothing gained you know.

They are chemotrophs, dude. They evolved to live by doing reduction reactions on rocks.

They can still cause problems, however. The bacteria responsible for tooth decay, for example, secrete a compound which dissolves away our teeth. Other bacteria, like botulism, produce a toxic waste product which can be fatal. Bacteria aren't like viruses which take over cells and force them to turn out copies of themselves, they poison us and "eat" us.

It may be that exposure to oxygen kills this particular bacteria, or it might "drown" in the higher levels of moisture found in our bodies compared to its natural environment. It might have a low mutation rate, so that it can't adapt to living in our bodies (either benignly or destructively). We don't know yet, so precaution is called for.

Nothing could go wrong at all.

Revived 60,000 year old viruses could, potentially & theoretically, pose the possible risk of a pandemic. Depending on the nature of the virus(es).