Multi-million year old mini-Corpsicles are coming alive again! Researchers believe they have isolated eight million year old bacteria from core samples taken within Antarctic glacial ice--and have revived them!
Frederik Pohl was the first to use the term corpsicle in his 1969 novel The Age of the Pussyfoot. The term--considered rather offensive by cryogenics supporters--combines 'corpse' with 'popsicle' a popular flavored ice treat, to describe human beings cryonically frozen in hopes that future human beings will be able to thaw them and bring them back to life. "Corpsicle" has since been used by other writers, including Robert Heinlein, Greg Bear, L. M. Bujold, Larry Niven and others.
The organisms that researcher Kay Bidle of Rutgers University revived are single-celled, (hence 'mini-corpsicles') In vitro, they reproduce slowly (about 1/10th the speed of younger microbes) due apparently to aeons of ionizing radiation whacking their genes. Our planet's melting icecaps are releasing enormous quantities of these and other species of ancient microbes back into circulation. But don't worry, they say, these are marine microbes, and not virulent toward land animals. Read New Scientist article
Wait a minute....most life on earth ARE marine organisms, and, were a certain thawed strain to prove lethal to certain marine algae (those producing most of the oxygen that we LAND animals breathe) we might be gasping not with wonder but with desperation.
Ron
Frederik Pohl was the first to use the term corpsicle in his 1969 novel The Age of the Pussyfoot. The term--considered rather offensive by cryogenics supporters--combines 'corpse' with 'popsicle' a popular flavored ice treat, to describe human beings cryonically frozen in hopes that future human beings will be able to thaw them and bring them back to life. "Corpsicle" has since been used by other writers, including Robert Heinlein, Greg Bear, L. M. Bujold, Larry Niven and others.
The organisms that researcher Kay Bidle of Rutgers University revived are single-celled, (hence 'mini-corpsicles') In vitro, they reproduce slowly (about 1/10th the speed of younger microbes) due apparently to aeons of ionizing radiation whacking their genes. Our planet's melting icecaps are releasing enormous quantities of these and other species of ancient microbes back into circulation. But don't worry, they say, these are marine microbes, and not virulent toward land animals. Read New Scientist article
Wait a minute....most life on earth ARE marine organisms, and, were a certain thawed strain to prove lethal to certain marine algae (those producing most of the oxygen that we LAND animals breathe) we might be gasping not with wonder but with desperation.
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