'Hellish' Hot Springs Yield Greenhouse Gas-eating Bug
A new species of bacteria discovered living in one of the most extreme environments on Earth could yield a tool in the fight against global warming.
Category > extremophiles
Trevor Blake: OVO blog October 2007
Christ @ Work. The Bible does contain some fine moral advice in it. It also contains some inhumanly evil moral advice. It also contains some foolish nonsense that dresses itself up as moral advice. That doesn’t make it much different from any number of other books, ancient and modern.
Extremophiles. What might humanity be able to engineer for ourselves to become extremophiles? What dangers do exremophiles present to humanity?
Interfaith Dialog. In some places, disagreements are resolved by discussion. In other places, disagreements are resolved by flogging.
Islam is Peace. Islam, like Christianity and all religions, is a collection of mean-spirited superstitions invented by illiterate pre-scientific nobodies that we have no reason to heed.
Krankheit. Sometimes sickness is a benefit.
The Latter-Day Saints and the Boy Scouts of America. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing if the Mormons got out of the Scouting business.
More Sperm. February 2005 saw the return of OVO after 13 years of hibernation. The theme for that issue was ‘sperm.’ Sperm remains in the news, and here are some of the top sperm stories from the past two years.
Peaceable Protests After Amsterdam Attacks. Police in the Dutch city of Amsterdam say several peaceful protests were held in the sixth night of memorials after officers shot a Moroccan man dead.
Priorities. It seems that other people being free to celebrate or have their own superstitions is intolerable to Muslims, while public whippings and stoning are just fine as long as they occur in-house.
Publius Enigma. It has something to do with Pink Floyd and the Internet and a treasure hunt.
Saturn Return. Saturn Return is when Universe picks you up from under the Christmas tree and shakes you to see if it can figure out what you are.
SB777. SB777 protects religious belief against discrimination. It also protects discrimination in religious belief. Only religion can distort the rule of law to this degree.
Sharia in the United States of America. It is illegal to non-surgically amputate people’s hands as a punishment for a crime. Illegal under United States law, but legal under sharia law.
Superstitious Exemption from the Rule of Law. For better and for worse, it is not the case that we can all happily get along. But where there is the rule of law and not force, fiat or superstition we can at least get along peaceably.
Two Articles from All Africa. Replacing witch doctors with Christians is not going to help the situation.
Two Links via God is for Suckers. All money spent on religion is money wasted, wasted more thoroughly than money spent on weapons or torture. At least when someone is killed or tortured, something happened.
Workplace Religious Freedom Act (S. 893). If this bill becomes law, then religious employees will have rights and privileges that no atheist employee can have.
extreme survivors | MetaFilter
Tardigrades, are sometimes called water bears or moss piglets.
Trevor Blake: Extremophiles
Extremophiles are living beings that thrive under conditions most living beings cannot survive. Some snakes can go six months without eating. There are fish that live in near-boiling, near-acid liquids. The plant welwitschia mirabilis can live for two thousand years, and the seeds of the methuselah plant can sprout after the same period of time. Bacteria can live for eight million years. The panspermia theory of life on Earth suggests that life arrived on Earth after surviving without atmosphere and under constant cosmic radiation while drifting through space, surviving also dropping into our atmosphere and crashing onto the surface of the Earth. There was some concern at one time that extremophile life on the moon posed a threat to astronauts. And, in fact, the bacteria streptococcus mitis is known to be able to survive a rocket launch, space vacuum, three years of radiation exposure, regular exposure to 20 degrees above absolute zero temperatures, and going without nutrients, water or an energy source on the surface of the moon. There are not many compilations of stories on extremophiles, but there are a one or two. What might humanity be able to engineer for ourselves to become extremophiles? What dangers do exremophiles present to humanity?
extremophiles
bacteria have the potential to adapt to extreme conditions
ScienceDaily: How Snakes Survive Starvation
The 62 snakes studied went about six months without eating. The results showed that the snakes could lower their standard metabolic rates, some by up to 72 percent.
Eight-million-year-old bug is alive and growing – earth – 07 August 2007 – New Scientist Environment
An 8-million-year-old bacterium that was extracted from the oldest known ice on Earth is now growing in a laboratory, claim researchers.
Eight-million-year-old bug is alive and growing – earth – 07 August 2007 – New Scientist Environment
2,000-year-old date seed grows in the Arava – Haaretz – Israel News
“There’s only one plant like this in the world, and I’m still worried about it,” she says. Methuselah – that is the sapling’s name – is indeed unique. In 2005, Soloway, from Kibbutz Ketura in the Arava, germinated it from a 2,000-year-old date seed found
2,000-year-old date seed grows in the Arava – Haaretz – Israel News
A seedling growing in the black pot in Elaine Solowey’s nursery on a kibbutz in Israel’s Arava desert is 2,000 years old. It is the oldest seed ever known to produce a viable young tree. The seed that produced Methuselah was discovered during archaeological excavations at King Herod’s palace on Mount Masada, near the Dead Sea. Its age has been confirmed by carbon dating. Scientists hope that the unique seedling will eventually yield vital clues to the medicinal properties of the fruit of the Judean date tree, which was long thought to be extinct.
The US’ Surveyor probe landed on the moon in 1969. It survived launch, space vacuum, 3 years of radiation exposure, and deep-freeze at an average temperature of only 20 degrees above absolute zero. Of course there were also no no nutrients, water or energy sources available to the probe or anything on the probe that whole time. But when astronauts brought back a piece of the Surveyor, they discovered the terrestrial bacteria Streptococcus mitis – alive – in some of the polyurethane foam insulation. Apparently someone sneezed on the thing before it took off. You can read about this here and there, but as Pete Conrad (look at those eyes!) said, “I always thought the most significant thing that we ever found on the whole…Moon was that little bacteria who came back and lived and nobody ever said [anything] about it.”
Evil humans are destroying the ecosystem! Wait a minute, here’s a 11,700 year old living thing. Never mind.
