Scientists, medical professionals and officials at the Pentagon are increasingly concerned about the potential organisms that have sat in permafrost.
  • Fades@lemmy.world
    30·
    3 years ago

    Stargate already covered this one; we all die from newly exposed bacteria/disease that is was previously locked away in ice

    • remotelove@lemmy.ca
      19·
      3 years ago

      Most of those should be bacteria, not a virus. I would speculate that they would be much easier to treat with common antibiotics. After all, they haven’t had time to adapt and become drug resistant… Yet.

        • remotelove@lemmy.ca
          7·
          3 years ago

          0.001% of bacteria your soap doesn’t kill is basically the Superman of bacteria

          I have jokingly said that for years about the marketing on soaps and nobody believed me. :)

          Micro-evolution is absolutely crazy though. I started learning about that with fungi; mycelium specifically. Those little things can shift their genetics lightning fast. If they are exposed to different nutrient sources or growing conditions, life… uh… finds a way. There is a debate that is going on right now about the whole naming convention of fungi being broken since fruit characteristics aren’t telling a complete enough picture. While most strains of, say, pink oyster mushrooms can produce the exact same fruit they might have wildly different genetic markers while still behaving like they are from the same strain.

          I think this was discovered when mycologists tried to import some mycelium into New Zealand. Different batches of mycelium were comming from the same exact strain and lineage but when it was tested for import, the genetics were too far off to match to a “legally importable” strain.

          Genetic “drift” is well known. After duplicating the same strain over a number of years from petri dish to petri dish, the mycelium just adapts to a cheap and easy agar food source and its fruiting tendencies may suffer as a result. What is new, is how fast it can actually happen in the wild without it going through the genetic lottery of spore combination.

          (Disclaimer: I am horrendously tired right now and I tend to jumble factoids in this state. Slap me if I got something horribly wrong.)

      • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
        4·
        3 years ago

        I ain’t afraid of old plagues. A 100,000 year old bacterium infecting a human is the equivalent of someone bringing a spear to a gunfight

  • TherouxSonfeir@lemm.eedeleted by creatorBanned from community
    121·
    3 years ago

    I’m pretty tired. I welcome the end of the world.

    • remotelove@lemmy.ca
      2·
      3 years ago

      I’d be down for that. I dunno why people hate on the xenomorph babies so much though. They just want a kiss.

  • nul@programming.dev
    4·
    3 years ago

    I hope the end of this post title is meant to be “good dogs who have been tied up too long.”

  • spudwart@spudwart.comEnglish
    52·
    3 years ago

    Can’t wait to all die out and leave behind an AI playing god to make another AI that plays human to get tetrominoes and stars.