We once wrote about what might happen if melting glaciers release long-frozen bacteria. Now it’s happening: a recent microbe that has been frozen in ice in Greenland for over 120,000 years has finally melted. Studying this could give scientists a clue about what might happen when we encounter germs on other planets.
In LiveScience.com, Jeanna Bryner quotes Jean Brenchley, one of the researchers who discovered this newly-awakened bacteria, as saying, “We don’t know what state they were in. They could’ve been dormant, or they could’ve been slowly metabolizing, but we don’t know for sure. Microbes have found ways to survive in harsh conditions for long times that we don’t yet fully understand.”
This team of scientists is not so much afraid of what will happen when these germs get out into our atmosphere. They want to study them in order to figure out what bacteria may still be alive on the frozen wastes of other planets, such as Mars.
This is the kind of secret information that Linda Moulton Howe reports so well. Come see and hear her latest dynamic presentation at our Dreamland Festival this weekend!
Art credit: Dreamstime.com
NOTE: This news story, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.
Subscribers, to watch the subscriber version of the video, first log in then click on Dreamland Subscriber-Only Video Podcast link.