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Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012)

nature.com

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Re: Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012)

#51

Post by ASalazarMX »

wpears wrote: post #20
spacecop wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I still don't understand the connection. Aliens buried the flowers under the tundra in the ice age? Why bring it up?

If the DNA in a seed is still in good enough shape to support blooming after being frozen 30,000 years, perhaps a seed frozen in a meteorite [1] could also survive long enough to be spread between solar systems. [1] maybe after glancing off a planet or created by the collision of two large objects

I'm no expert, but wouldn't said seed first be baked by the heat of an impact strong enough to launch a chunk of planet to space?

Re: Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012)

#52

Post by rubyfan »

Reminds me of an episode of Futurama where they revive xmas trees which were accidentally were cross contaminated with bio-weapons. Spoiler, the Christmas trees shoot exploding pine cones that multiply until the entire earth is covered in pine trees.

Amy: "What's that splork on them? It's not germs, is it?"

* https://theinfosphere.org/Transcript:The_Futurama_Holiday_Sp...

Re: Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012)

#53

Post by bryondowd »

amelius wrote: post #44
grondilu wrote: post #9

When talking about megafauna resurrection, it is often said that it's not possible because DNA degrades too much after a few thousand years. Yet apparently the DNA of this plant was still viable. What am I missing?

I guess that even if the DNA breaks down into smaller strands, you can still computationally assemble the DNA back into its original form (just search for overlaps in the sequences, and stick these together). (Remember that if you have multiple cells, you have lots of strands of the same DNA, all broken in different places.) But I'm not an expert.

Not an expert, but I would think it depends how broken down they are. Assuming you have the tech to examine millions of fragments, you would still need long enough sequences for the overlaps to be unique. For instance, you probably couldn't put a book back together with nothing but ten character phrases, but you probably could with 100 characters. It would be interesting to run a simulation to see where the cutoff lies.

Re: Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012)

#54

Post by pvaldes »

dgudkov wrote: post #43
pvaldes wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could survive long enough to be toasted when the meteorite finally falls to the promised land planet, in form of fireball.

Inner ice of sufficiently large comets can survive atmospheric entry.

I'm not an expert on comets, so I might be wrong, but I guess that we talk about recycled ice; that would be sterilized each time the comet orbit pass closest to the sun and the water is (partially?) boiled, to become frozen again later.

There would be probably other consequences if a such large comet will fall in a planet. I can't see any happy ending for this organism to surviving its travel just by chance. If the comet is small or disintegrates in smaller pieces the plant is roasted and dead. Otherwise if fallen in one piece, all the life in the impact area of such large comet should be crushed by the pressure wave and vaporized also, including our plant

Re: Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012)

#55

Post by erikb »

tdy721 wrote: post #29
erikb wrote: post #28

Please tell me that virusses and bacteria can't be revived after 30k years in ice, or that our imune system is able to remember its defenses against virusses and bacteria it hasn't seen for 30k years.

"Revive" a virus? ...please elaborate!

Virus in position (x,y,z). It's f'n cold around it. It freezes. 30k years pass. Some scientist grabs ice and melts it. Virus is back.

I know it was quite hard to wrap one's head around this. Sorry that I didn't explain it more indepth to non initiated. That was so elitist of me.

(PS: I know what you want to say, but it's your own fault for arguing that way.)

Re: Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012)

#57

Post by blacksmith_tb »

bryondowd wrote: post #53
amelius wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that even if the DNA breaks down into smaller strands, you can still computationally assemble the DNA back into its original form (just search for overlaps in the sequences, and stick these together). (Remember that if you have multiple cells, you have lots of strands of the same DNA, all broken in different places.) But I'm not an expert.

Not an expert, but I would think it depends how broken down they are. Assuming you have the tech to examine millions of fragments, you would still need long enough sequences for the overlaps to be unique. For instance, you probably couldn't put a book back together with nothing but ten character phrases, but you probably could with 100 characters. It would be interesting to run a simulation to see where the cutoff li…

Also not an expert, but since a very large percentage of a given dino's genes should be common in other organisms, there's at least a large corpus to compare (most) fragments to.

Re: Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012)

#58

Post by thaumasiotes »

erikb wrote: post #55
tdy721 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Revive" a virus? ...please elaborate!

Virus in position (x,y,z). It's f'n cold around it. It freezes. 30k years pass. Some scientist grabs ice and melts it. Virus is back. I know it was quite hard to wrap one's head around this. Sorry that I didn't explain it more indepth to non initiated. That was so elitist of me. (PS: I know what you want to say, but it's your own fault for arguing that way.)

> (PS: I know what you want to say, but it's your own fault for arguing that way.)

If that's the game you're going to play, what was the point of your original comment? You're claiming to have known when you posted it that it was nonsense.

Re: Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012)

#59

Post by tdy721 »

erikb wrote: post #55
tdy721 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Revive" a virus? ...please elaborate!

Virus in position (x,y,z). It's f'n cold around it. It freezes. 30k years pass. Some scientist grabs ice and melts it. Virus is back. I know it was quite hard to wrap one's head around this. Sorry that I didn't explain it more indepth to non initiated. That was so elitist of me. (PS: I know what you want to say, but it's your own fault for arguing that way.)

Ahh, "The Andromeda Strain", good book that one.

Re: Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice (2012)

#60

Post by bryondowd »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #57
bryondowd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an expert, but I would think it depends how broken down they are. Assuming you have the tech to examine millions of fragments, you would still need long enough sequences for the overlaps to be unique. For instance, you probably couldn't put a book back together with nothing but ten character phrases, but you probably could with 100 characters. It would be interesting to run a simulation to see where the cutoff li…

Also not an expert, but since a very large percentage of a given dino's genes should be common in other organisms, there's at least a large corpus to compare (most) fragments to.

Imagine taking a thousand copies of War and Peace, cutting them into strings of less than 10 characters, and mixing them all up. Even with the entire corpus of human literature to compare to, I doubt you'd be able to reassemble the scraps back to something even close to War and Peace. In fact, you could probably take those scraps and turn them into any number of completely different novels, because your building blocks are so small you've got essentially no constraints to work with. You don't have complex ideas, you just have the basic building blocks of language.

Now, I'm not saying this is the case for dinosaurs, just that, given enough time to decay, it makes sense that eventually DNA would reach a point where it isn't possible to reconstruct, because the information just isn't there any more. I'd be curious to know how long it would take to reach this point.

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