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Let's get one thing out of the way really quickly: The ancient, giant virus recently discovered in melting Arctic ice is not going to kill you.
But here's the bad news: It's not the first ancient virus that scientists have found frozen — it's the fourth found since 2003. And you can be sure it won't be the last. And with climate change causing massive melts, it's not totally alarmist to suggest that something deadly might one day emerge from a long, icy sleep.
As if climate change didn't already suck enough, right?
The newly discovered, 30,000-year-old virus is reported in a paper published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Mollivirus sibericum is a whopping .6 microns across, making it what scientists call a giant virus. In addition to towering over modern viruses (and even some bacteria), size-wise, these ancient microbes had a lot more genes.
Read more http://www.thespec.com/news-story/5...ered-in-melting-ice-and-it-won-t-be-the-last/
But here's the bad news: It's not the first ancient virus that scientists have found frozen — it's the fourth found since 2003. And you can be sure it won't be the last. And with climate change causing massive melts, it's not totally alarmist to suggest that something deadly might one day emerge from a long, icy sleep.
As if climate change didn't already suck enough, right?
The newly discovered, 30,000-year-old virus is reported in a paper published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Mollivirus sibericum is a whopping .6 microns across, making it what scientists call a giant virus. In addition to towering over modern viruses (and even some bacteria), size-wise, these ancient microbes had a lot more genes.
Read more http://www.thespec.com/news-story/5...ered-in-melting-ice-and-it-won-t-be-the-last/
