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Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)

sciencemag.org

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Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)

#71

Post by hinkley »

wombatmobile wrote: post #54
HPsquared wrote: post #23

Are the microbes themselves that old, or simply made of old material? Edit: quoting the article, it doesn't say the microbes themselves are 100M years old, only that they're in sediment which is that old. Big difference! "99.1% of the microbes in sediment deposited 101.5 million years ago were still alive and were ready to eat"

From the paper > Very low permeability (1.1–2.0 × 10−17 m2 for IODP Site U1365 4H-3 [26.6 meters below seafloor (mbsf)] and 8.9 × 10−18 m2 for IODP Site U1370 [37.5 mbsf], respectively), very low estimated pore size of the abyssal clay (~0.02 microns, calculated using above permeability data according to the equation shown in Tanikawa et al.), and thick porcellanite layers above the oldest sampled horizons appear to…

> appear to preclude cell migration into the sampled sediment

appear to preclude = we don't know how it could

100 million years is a long, long time for bacteria to find a route past a barrier and migrate sideways through a more hospitable substrate.

They found oxygen and decided that meant there was no oxidation (eating) going on. I wonder if they have any specialists on the team who would know specifically about permeability (the quoted person is a 'microbial ecologist', which sounds like it would know quite a few things about organic and inorganic chemistry, I don't expect they'd be an expert on geologic timescales. The way an architect in theory knows about physics of building materials but still gets into scraps with the general contractor.

Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)

#73

Post by staplers »

hinkley wrote: post #71
wombatmobile wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the paper > Very low permeability (1.1–2.0 × 10−17 m2 for IODP Site U1365 4H-3 [26.6 meters below seafloor (mbsf)] and 8.9 × 10−18 m2 for IODP Site U1370 [37.5 mbsf], respectively), very low estimated pore size of the abyssal clay (~0.02 microns, calculated using above permeability data according to the equation shown in Tanikawa et al.), and thick porcellanite layers above the oldest sampled horizons appear to…

> appear to preclude cell migration into the sampled sediment appear to preclude = we don't know how it could 100 million years is a long, long time for bacteria to find a route past a barrier and migrate sideways through a more hospitable substrate. They found oxygen and decided that meant there was no oxidation (eating) going on. I wonder if they have any specialists on the team who would know specifically about pe…

  I wonder if they have any specialists on the team who would know specifically about permeability
Sounds like you're the expert, why don't you join them?

Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)

#75

Post by _p3yi »

jug wrote: post #5

Microbes Sleeping 100M Years on the Ocean Floor WERE INTENTIONALLY Awakened Move along if you expected this to be a story on climate change effects.

"Genetic analysis of the microbes revealed they belonged to more than eight known bacterial groups, many of which are commonly found elsewhere in saltwater where they play important roles in breaking down organic matter. "

Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)

#76

Post by hinkley »

staplers wrote: post #73
hinkley wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> appear to preclude cell migration into the sampled sediment appear to preclude = we don't know how it could 100 million years is a long, long time for bacteria to find a route past a barrier and migrate sideways through a more hospitable substrate. They found oxygen and decided that meant there was no oxidation (eating) going on. I wonder if they have any specialists on the team who would know specifically about pe…

I wonder if they have any specialists on the team who would know specifically about permeability Sounds like you're the expert, why don't you join them?

It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.

I'm not the expert they need. I'm an expert in debugging. The tricky bit with debugging is, X can't happen, but X did happen. Magic did not cause this. Unless you have 1000 machines, cosmic rays probably didn't cause it either.

"X can't happen" is actually "All of my assumptions say 'X cannot happen'". Therefore, one of your assumptions is wrong. Don't shrug and put it off on someone else. start testing your assumptions.

In this case there's probably a PhD in testing that assumption. My question is, is that a future PhD or an existing one?

Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)

#77

Post by hinkley »

hinkley wrote: post #76
staplers wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if they have any specialists on the team who would know specifically about permeability Sounds like you're the expert, why don't you join them?

It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. I'm not the expert they need. I'm an expert in debugging. The tricky bit with debugging is, X can't happen, but X did happen. Magic did not cause this. Unless you have 1000 machines, cosmic rays probably didn't cause it either. "X can't happen" is actually "All of my assumptions say 'X cannot happen'". Therefore, one of your assumptions is wrong. Don…

I should also say that I'm invested in the idea that we could seed benthic microbes into the universe and that some day that would let us terraform Mars and Venus. That will not happen with magic thinking.

I knew someone who believed in the paranormal. She got hooked in with a group of ghost hunters in Seattle who were trying to apply science to ghost hunting (similar to the Portland group that got that reality show. Apparently they sat around making fun of those people as a sub-hobby.) They didn't want to be made fools of by declaring something was paranormal that ended up being loose wiring. So they had a very long checklist of things they would look at. Often the house owner was told to call an electrician (loose wires in a wiring panel make you feel weird when standing on the other side of the wall) or occasionally an HVAC specialist.

Practically speaking, they ended up being a ghost debunking group, hoping that one day they'd find something truly inexplicable. Discussions like this tend to remind me of that group.

Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)

#78

Post by saalweachter »

wombatmobile wrote: post #54
HPsquared wrote: post #23

Are the microbes themselves that old, or simply made of old material? Edit: quoting the article, it doesn't say the microbes themselves are 100M years old, only that they're in sediment which is that old. Big difference! "99.1% of the microbes in sediment deposited 101.5 million years ago were still alive and were ready to eat"

From the paper > Very low permeability (1.1–2.0 × 10−17 m2 for IODP Site U1365 4H-3 [26.6 meters below seafloor (mbsf)] and 8.9 × 10−18 m2 for IODP Site U1370 [37.5 mbsf], respectively), very low estimated pore size of the abyssal clay (~0.02 microns, calculated using above permeability data according to the equation shown in Tanikawa et al.), and thick porcellanite layers above the oldest sampled horizons appear to…

> Consequently, the sampled communities have likely been trapped...

That would seem to indicate they are talking about isolation rather than preservation of individual microbes.

Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)

#79

Post by tomcam »

hinkley wrote: post #77
hinkley wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. I'm not the expert they need. I'm an expert in debugging. The tricky bit with debugging is, X can't happen, but X did happen. Magic did not cause this. Unless you have 1000 machines, cosmic rays probably didn't cause it either. "X can't happen" is actually "All of my assumptions say 'X cannot happen'". Therefore, one of your assumptions is wrong. Don…

I should also say that I'm invested in the idea that we could seed benthic microbes into the universe and that some day that would let us terraform Mars and Venus. That will not happen with magic thinking. I knew someone who believed in the paranormal. She got hooked in with a group of ghost hunters in Seattle who were trying to apply science to ghost hunting (similar to the Portland group that got that reality show.…

The web in a nutshell. Your story reminds me of one of the early, lighthearted episodes of the X-Files.

Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)

#80

Post by saiya-jin »

saalweachter wrote: post #78
wombatmobile wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the paper > Very low permeability (1.1–2.0 × 10−17 m2 for IODP Site U1365 4H-3 [26.6 meters below seafloor (mbsf)] and 8.9 × 10−18 m2 for IODP Site U1370 [37.5 mbsf], respectively), very low estimated pore size of the abyssal clay (~0.02 microns, calculated using above permeability data according to the equation shown in Tanikawa et al.), and thick porcellanite layers above the oldest sampled horizons appear to…

> Consequently, the sampled communities have likely been trapped... That would seem to indicate they are talking about isolation rather than preservation of individual microbes.

Yeah, its an super old colony living from itself in closed ecosystem, not super old individual cells.
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