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Saturday, February 26, 2005

Why the Bush Administration is going to have to stop all scientific research
Posted by Jill | 7:45 PM

It's because scientists keep coming up with pesky findings like this -- discoveries with the potential to completely debunk beyond all doubt the Biblical account of creation:

NASA researchers say they have recovered bacteria that apparently lay dormant for 32,000 years in a frozen pond in central Alaska.

If confirmed, the finding means that there may be many other pockets of ancient life in permafrost and seafloor sediments. The hardiness of the bacteria also suggests that life could survive even on Mars, in places like the frozen sea reported by other researchers this week.

But the NASA claim was greeted with some reserve by other scientists because previous claims of resuscitating ancient bacteria have not been borne out.

The bacterium, a novel species, was recovered from a frozen pond exposed in the side of the Fox tunnel, a hole dug through Pleistocene-era ice by the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory at the Army. Dr. Richard B. Hoover, a biologist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, said that while visiting the refrigerated tunnel he noticed a discolored patch in a layer that froze 32,000 years ago, according to radiocarbon data. Taking samples back to his laboratory, Dr. Hoover and his colleague Dr. Elena V. Pikuta noticed bacteria that started moving as soon as the ice thawed.

The bacteria resembled a group of microbes called carnobacteria that can tolerate cold and are often isolated from refrigerated food. The NASA researchers established that the microbes belonged to a new species, which they have named Carnobacterium pleistocenium in honor of its age. The bacterium is not poisonous, Dr. Hoover said, although some of its close relatives cause disease in fish. The researchers are reporting their finding in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

Dr. Hoover said he believed the bacteria were not able to divide during the eons spent locked in the ice, so the specimens he thawed out would have been 32,000 years old, the time when the Alaskan pond was last in liquid form.


There's only so long the president's fundie minions are going to allow this sort of exploration to take place. After all, we can't run the risk of finding anything to prove them wrong, now, can we?
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