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What is the oldest living organism on the planet?

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Re: What is the oldest living organism on the planet?

#41

Post by scott_s »

coldpie wrote: post #33
scott_s wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another Skeptic's Guide listener on HN! I've posted various comments linking to SGU segments or Steven Novella posts, but I have yet to see anyone else do so.

I heard about it here, actually, in some podcast thread a year or two ago. It rapidly became my favorite podcast. 90 minutes every week!

I actually stumbled on it 4 years ago while having a discussion on HN. I was looking for explanations on the biological approach to mental illness: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5829068

Re: What is the oldest living organism on the planet?

#42

Post by dmurray »

VLM wrote: post #40
Razengan wrote: post #36

A related question which has always intrigued me: Can long-living organisms, or hard-coded behavior across generations of short-lived organisms, be used to transfer data or preserve knowledge across incredible stretches of time? For example, the rings within trees that live for thousands of years. Or, the elaborate art made by creatures like the Japanese Puffer Fish. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1PID91sEW…

DNA is probably your best bet for bottom up approach. Its surprisingly difficult data to find and the rate probably varies a lot, but wikipedia claims: "The human germline mutation rate is approximately 0.5×10−9 per basepair per year" My RAID array does better, polaroid pictures somewhat worse, etc. A bit error rate of 1e-9/yr is something that can be worked around over a lifespan but probably not over a million year…

Why not over a million years? That would still only be 0.1% of bits flipped, and it should be possible to design a code with enough redundancy or error correction to take care of that. Is there some compounding effect I'm not thinking of? Or simply that it's hard to keep a species alive for a million years?

Re: What is the oldest living organism on the planet?

#43

Post by Chaebixi »

VLM wrote: post #40
Razengan wrote: post #36

A related question which has always intrigued me: Can long-living organisms, or hard-coded behavior across generations of short-lived organisms, be used to transfer data or preserve knowledge across incredible stretches of time? For example, the rings within trees that live for thousands of years. Or, the elaborate art made by creatures like the Japanese Puffer Fish. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1PID91sEW…

DNA is probably your best bet for bottom up approach. Its surprisingly difficult data to find and the rate probably varies a lot, but wikipedia claims: "The human germline mutation rate is approximately 0.5×10−9 per basepair per year" My RAID array does better, polaroid pictures somewhat worse, etc. A bit error rate of 1e-9/yr is something that can be worked around over a lifespan but probably not over a million year…

But if you're just storing random data, like text, it probably offers little to no fitness benefit to the organism. So it could all be lost with a random deletion and no one but you would care.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletion_(genetics)

Re: What is the oldest living organism on the planet?

#45

Post by qbrass »

mtdewcmu wrote: post #37

It seems that one could argue that the first single-celled organism has never died. Single-celled organisms reproduce by dividing, and there's no distinction between parent and offspring, right? So if any offspring survives, then the original organism arguably has not died.

And when it becomes a multi-celled organism through various mutations?

If you could trace your lineage back to the first single-celled organism, would that make you the oldest lifeform on the planet?

Re: What is the oldest living organism on the planet?

#46

Post by Razengan »

Chaebixi wrote: post #43
VLM wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DNA is probably your best bet for bottom up approach. Its surprisingly difficult data to find and the rate probably varies a lot, but wikipedia claims: "The human germline mutation rate is approximately 0.5×10−9 per basepair per year" My RAID array does better, polaroid pictures somewhat worse, etc. A bit error rate of 1e-9/yr is something that can be worked around over a lifespan but probably not over a million year…

But if you're just storing random data, like text, it probably offers little to no fitness benefit to the organism. So it could all be lost with a random deletion and no one but you would care. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletion_(genetics)

> if you're just storing random data, like text, it probably offers little to no fitness benefit to the organism.

Wow, this makes me even more interested in the idea of using mating rituals as a mechanism for very-long-term knowledge storage!

Things like birdsongs, dances, and the aforementioned courtship art... If an individual can only reproduce if it correctly retransmits the "data", then the data will survive as long as the species does..no?

Re: What is the oldest living organism on the planet?

#47

Post by coldpie »

scott_s wrote: post #41
coldpie wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard about it here, actually, in some podcast thread a year or two ago. It rapidly became my favorite podcast. 90 minutes every week!

I actually stumbled on it 4 years ago while having a discussion on HN. I was looking for explanations on the biological approach to mental illness: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5829068

Heh heh, how on Earth did you dig that comment up?

Re: What is the oldest living organism on the planet?

#48

Post by theprop »

Yes, I believe the oldest trees on Earth are around 5000 years old. Some Fungi systems could be extremely old...but they sort of clone each other so it's not exactly the same organism living...but that said most of your cells except neurons seem to die and get replaced, so continuous living is open to some interpretation. You could say the creator of the Venus Willendorf is the oldest "living in our memory" human being...the sculpture is thought to be 35,000 years old and continues to influence artists today like Jeff Koons. http://arthistoryresources.net/willendorf/willendorfdiscover...

Re: What is the oldest living organism on the planet?

#49

Post by simen »

Somewhat related: last year a study showed that the oldest living vertebrates are Greenland sharks, which can attain ages of 400-500 years: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160811143218.h...

Saw a documentary that mentioned this recently. Interestingly, these sharks are born with great eyesight, but nearly all of them that have been studied have these parasites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ommatokoita) embedded in their eyes that literally eat their corneas.

Re: What is the oldest living organism on the planet?

#50

Post by scott_s »

coldpie wrote: post #47
scott_s wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually stumbled on it 4 years ago while having a discussion on HN. I was looking for explanations on the biological approach to mental illness: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5829068

Heh heh, how on Earth did you dig that comment up?

HN's search function is good! I just looked for "scott_s Steven Novella", changed it to look at comments (default is stories, which, unsurprisingly, there are no hits), then sorted by date. It's usually easy to find a comment you or someone else made by just searching for the username, then some keywords.
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