The worm turns
This is straight out of science fiction:
Scientists have revived a worm that was frozen 46,000 years ago — at a time when woolly mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers and giant elks still roamed the Earth.
The roundworm, of a previously unknown species, survived 40 meters (131.2 feet) below the surface in the Siberian permafrost in a dormant state known as cryptobiosis, according to Teymuras Kurzchalia, professor emeritus at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden and one of the scientists involved in the research …
Five years ago, scientists from the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science in Russia found two roundworm species in the Siberian permafrost.
One of the researchers, Anastasia Shatilovich, revived two of the worms at the institute by simply rehydrating them with water, before taking around 100 worms to labs in Germany for further analysis, transporting them in her pocket.
After thawing the worms, the scientists used radiocarbon analysis of the plant material in the sample to establish that the deposits had not been thawed since between 45,839 and 47,769 years ago.
This also reminds me of a recurrent nightmare I used to have years ago. In the dream, I would open a drawer and find some sort of desiccated creature there, all shriveled up and almost recognizable. Sometimes it was a pet I’d forgotten to care for, or a couple of times (particularly horrifying) a baby I’d somehow forgotten. Once it was an elderly person. I would hydrate the thing and try to revive it, but I never really learned whether these efforts were successful because I’d usually wake up in horror before that point.
Another repellent thing about this science story was that Shatilovich transported the worms to Germany in her pocket. Was there no better way to do it?
But you gotta hand it to those worms for survival strategies.
I have had that dream about finding a pet I had forgotten about, too. Not recently- was more common when I was much younger.
in my zoology phase, I collected a number of animals, those small snakes a squirre
Shatilovich transported the worms to Germany in her pocket. Was there no better way to do it?
Try explaining to Customs that you’ve got unexamined live 45,000 year old critters in your suitcase, and see how far you get.
Is there any doubt that many ‘scientists’ never ask themselves; if something should be done, simply because it can be done? Were those worms ‘revived’ in a level four biolab? Any thought given to biological contamination? Possibility of reviving an unknown & ancient deadly virus?
This brought to mind the moral lesson from ‘Jurassic Park’.
Crap on a cracker, that’s all we need now, crypt-ice-age-worm virus that causes Democrats and at times some normal people to become vampires who will live for 47,000 years sucking brain fluid out of those who they deem are lesser folks.
Re: Dream
neo:
Brrr….
Did the world lose a Kafka when you didn’t pursue writing fiction?
“Jurassic Park” = science fiction. Like “Stranger in a Strange Land” = science fiction. Actual science is a lot harder to do than science fiction.
well it was based on the findings of robert bakker, an esteemed paleontologist, re the velociraptor, now considering that there is a ongoing project to clone mammoths (for reasons) we wonder what are they thinking, and how could it go wrong?
e e cervantes:
Science fiction, there’s a hidden clue. Hint, it’s in the name.
Still fiction.
These scientists have never seen a 1950’s horror movie.
They are playin’ with fire.
Neo, I too have had many nightmares about dogs somehow found dead, in my care. Always small puppies.
And some human babies, though fewer.
Pretty sure the root seed in my case was family abuse.
“Sins of our fathers” has real & lasting consequences.
I send warm hugs & compassion to you
.
“No matter how he tried
He could not break free
And the worms ate into his brain”
Om,
Do explain how reviving a relative complex creature like a worm negates the possibility that one might also revive an ancient pathogen,along with that worm, that modern man has no immunity to? How is the mere possibility of that ” science fiction”?
Speaking of worms, why is Joe Biden soon traveling to Lake Tahoe? What’s going on?! I suggest an open thread on this – something tells me the spinning top is slowing, wobbling and about to fall over!
Count me as someone who is enthusiastically supports, and looks forward to, the cloning of mammoths. I’m excited by the prospect. I’m interested in the growing field of de-exinction studies. I am seriously a de-extinctionist.
jon baker:
Please explain how you keep said prehistoric pathogens from being released from the Arctic permafrost as climate changes. No people are needed for the thawing BTW. I know a PhD geologist who studied bacteria that live in the rock and subsurface. A big problem was being able to determine when these organisms were truly and completely dead, incapable of being awakened.
Science fiction is easy. Science is hard. You do realize that for complex, higher organisms there is such a thing as a internal biome; all the micro organisms that have evolved and live in and on you? It seems that without that biome the larger “higher” organism doesn’t fare too well.
Science fiction is easy. Science is hard.
Oh noes, frozen nematodes!
They are going to release the unfrozen Kraken. Just in time for 2024.
Science fiction, aliens, UFOs Jon?
What an odd and terrifying dream! I’ve never heard of it, but it seems like it’s not uncommon based on this post and the comments.
I assume they’ll compare the revived round worms DNA to its modern cousins? Interesting to see how much, if any is different.
Om, yes that internal biome is exactly the potential issue. Obviously , there is nothing to be done about natural thawing in the wilderness. But that is not what happened here. This was brought back to civilization.
We never had animals so I don’t dream about animals. The dreams I remember recently are of my being in some large unfamiliar house or public building that is like a maze. I keep moving in it but am lost and afraid that I can’t get out. Dead ends, etc. Random people from my past appear in my dreams and speak with me, then disappear. (I do realize that no one is interested in my dreams.)
A not dream: One spring when I was about 8 or 10, my mother was doing her spring cleaning and pulled the dresser in my room away from the wall. Behind it she found a dried up pet turtle I had lost and forgotten about. Pet turtles were pretty common then. Any way, it looked dead but she put it in a bowl of water and watched as it seemed to swell up and walked away. It had just hibernated through the winter.
Science fiction => Conspiracy theory => Fact
Like Disney says, “A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you’re fast asleep,” but are dreams usually about things one wants or wishes for? Are they more usually about problems that make one panic? The impression I have is that dreams are about problems, but all the running around trying to solve the problem isn’t usually terrifying, because the dream takes me back to places I’ve been and people I’ve known, and that’s enjoyable.
VV,
I found your dream interesting. Dreams are fascinating stuff!
Sounds like you are struggling with something in life, perhaps feeling lost?
If “the science is settled” it ain’t science.
jon baker:
Things thawing out from the
permafrost will spread as they are able and there are more people up there than just scientists. Folks dig up wolly mamouth carcassas routinely. The barn door has been open for quite a while.
@Abraxas at 1:14 and Rufus at 1:20:
I agree that dreams are sometimes about wish fulfillment but maybe more often about problems; maybe our subconscious is working on the problem or problems while we sleep. I had a dream that I still remember, at the beginning of what turned out to be a bad divorce. I dreamt that I was in a rowboat with my two daughters, who (in the dream) were very young (baby, toddler) and I was responsible for their lives. I had to keep them from drowning and was petrified. It’s pretty clear what that dream meant. I had been a stay-at-home mother and my ex was a narcissist who turned out to be vindictive beyond belief. (Of course, I knew nothing about narcissism at the time, but my “gut” knew.)
I have always been able to cope with life through grit and perseverance, but at present I feel both personally (to a degree) and in terms of the world situation (for all of us) that there really may be no solutions or escape this time.
For a long time, my most common dream was about being in college having an exam and not knowing where it was — and maybe never having gone to the course. More recently, I was cleaning out my parents’s house and my dreams were about being overwhelmed by stuff — books, boxes, piles, stacks. Lately I had a dream telling me how to win the lottery.
I hope things worked out for you. I don’t think I’ll win the lottery, though.
Abraxas:
The student anxiety dream – very common. Although I doubt I’ve had that one in years.
As far as the shrunken-creature-in-a-drawer dreams go, I think they pretty much stopped after I managed to have a child and raise him to maturity. I had a bit of a revival of the dream, I think, when I was dealing with my mother in her old age.
huxley:
I did write fiction – short stories – for a while. But maybe I was going in the wrong direction and should have written science fiction or creepy Kafkaesque stories. Mine were more conventional. Back then, I was aiming for a certain more general market and came very close to succeeding but in the end no dice.
To Abraxas at 12:18, Neo at 1:54, and huxley :
Abraxas: Thanks for your kind words. I was fueled by contempt and rage for him at that time, and vowed that he was not going to destroy me. I was blessed with what I consider to be the world’s greatest financial planner (for me, anyway). 🙂 (Not to say that any of it has been easy.) So now, 30+ years later, “the worm has turned”, “what goes around comes around”, and he is now 80, helpless/unwell, pretty much alone, and dependent. I say this not to gloat, but perhaps to encourage someone else in a position similar to mine. Narcissists tend to self-destruct, one way or another.
Neo: if asked (and I haven’t been), I would interpret your drawer dream as evidence that you are a highly conscientious person, subconsciously worrying that you might have been responsible for someone’s/something’s death. Glad to see that life showed you otherwise about that.
huxley: I have a degree in literature and have read many wonderful short stories. Thanks for writing some. 🙂