No Microbes In First Sample From Lake Vostok 60
ananyo writes "A first analysis of the ice that froze onto the drillbit used in last February's landmark drilling to a pristine Antarctic lake shows no native microbes came up with the lake water, according to Sergey Bulat of Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (Russia). The very uppermost layer of Lake Vostock appears to be 'lifeless' so far, says Bulat, but that doesn't mean the rest of it is. Bulat and his colleagues counted the microbes present in the ice sample and checked their genetic makeup to figure out the phylotypes. They counted fewer than 10 microbes/ml — about the same magnitude they would expect to find in the background in their clean room."
Davidoff.... (Score:3, Funny)
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Good point, we should just rush in to things like this assuming there's nothing that could go wrong. What could possibly go wrong with that plan!
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Microbe rape? did you just invoke internet rule number 35?
Re:Not fooled (Score:5, Interesting)
You could watch the original Fern Gully, but I also like the 2009 remake, "Avatar".
Seriously, line them up. They're both animated movies about a foreign environment, rich in resources valuable to humans. You've got a human male protagonist, who is originally a member of the first wave of humans planning to harvest the natural resources without concern for the natives. Through some external technical wizardry, protagonist changes size and ends up in the middle of the new environment, where he meets a beautiful native female. As the human initially navigates his way around the environment with his new size and point of view, predictably comedic results occur. Overconfidence quickly leads him in over his head into a near-fatal situation, where the native female uses her intimate knowledge of the environment to rescue him from his own ineptitude. The male is attracted to the female, who rejects him. Over time the human discovers the previously ignored beauty of the ecosystem and learns to respect the environment; which enables the female to grow attracted to him. The female is conflicted, though, and consults with her wise parent, an important elder of the natives. The human continues to learn the native ways, culminating with taming and flying on the native flying animals. The massive wave of normal sized humans then arrive in giant machines to harvest the resources. The movies climax when the protagonist fully changes sides and defends the environment from the encroaching humans, using his knowledge of the human systems and ways to organize the natives to defeat the invaders. The female finally acknowledges her love of the male.
Even the scenery is the same. Both movies have large trees that are important to the natives. Both feature loops of stone reminiscent of magnetic flux lines.
The only thing missing from Avatar is the Robin Williams character, Batty. The human sidekick in Avatar isn't nearly as humorous.
Re:Not fooled (Score:5, Funny)
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What, you didn't see the resemblance when you watched Avatar?
I think maybe Fern Gully just stuck with me more because it was one of the first movies I took my son to.
Re:Not fooled (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you do for a living? (Score:2)
I might want to hire you to explain thing I've said.
You're probably very busy during the campaign season.
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Anyway, well said.
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Wow that's highly original. No one has ever noticed that before, well other than all the people who ranted about it in 2009 of course.
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Maybe you missed the part where Jake, the "hero" of Avatar only succeeds in getting everyone killed [...]
Jake didn't really seem to be imparting too much of his knowledge of Human weaponry to the Navi--or helping them plan strategy. The Navi ground attack was particularly ridiculous in my eyes--you guys are good at running around the trees, but everybody is going to attack from the ground? Who's bright idea was that?
There are two deleted scenes from the DVD which were interesting. In one, Tsu'tey is talking to Jake about how the humans have no honor because they use their machine guns and rockets from far a
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Well fuck, somehow my post got mangled. Let's try this again.
Maybe you missed the part where Jake, the "hero" of Avatar only succeeds in getting everyone killed, and that it's Grace that's the real hero of the film. When she gets uploaded, she helps Eywa to understand the invaders and their tech, and rally its planetary resources to repel them like an immune system. Pandora is not the primitive place you think; it's built on an incredibly advanced bio-technology.
On of the major themes of Avatar that people
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You could watch the original Fern Gully, but I also like the 2009 remake, "Avatar".
I thought Avatar was a remake of "Dances with Wolves"
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Re:Not fooled (Score:5, Funny)
so something EVIL must be going on!
Yeah, I think the right question is: what lurks there under the sleeping waters of lake Vostok that ate EVEN the microbes?
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtag'n!
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So what's it like being a functioning retard?
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I, too, can use the L33T Translator...although the above person seems to have used a tard translator of which I am not aware.
Anyway, to wit:
"Ph0UR 5C0RE 4nD 5EVEN YE4R2 490 0uR pH47HeR2 8r0u9h7 ph0R7H, up0n 7H12 K0n71neN7, 4 nEw n4710N, K0ncE1ved 1N L18ER7y, 4Nd DED1C47Ed 70 7Eh Pr0P051710n 7h47 4LL men r Cre47ed equ4L.
n0w we R EN949eD 1N 4 9re47 C1V1l w4R, 7e571N' whe7HEr 7h47 n4710N, 0r 4Ny n4710n 50 k0NCE1ved, 4Nd 50 Ded1C47Ed, K4n L0n9 EnDuRe. wE r mE7 hERe 0N 4 9rE47 8477LEf1eLd 0F 7H47 W4R. wE h4vE k0
they are going about this all wrong (Score:5, Funny)
they should be piping this water out for the high end bottled water market
"No Microbes In First Sample From Lake Vostok" is of course then the ultimate marketing tool
$9.99 for a 32 oz frosted white glass bottle with images of a pristine Antarctic mountain range.
Hire me Coca Cola!
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This is a case where "Good Enough" is not good enough.
Looking for microbes, any microbes, the clean room must be made a sterile room, Class 0, with zero possibility of contamination. In this case, it's doubtful they even tried to get as close as possible.
Microbes observed can be compared to microbes known in the testing environment. A similar process is used in Class 10 and better semiconductor clean rooms to evaluate and investigate contamination sources. An thorough DNA and RNA comparison would tell them
Nutrients (Score:3)
So what exactly do they suspect these bacteria have been eating down there in the deep dark cold?
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each other
Re:Nutrients (Score:4, Informative)
They're expecting to get more microbes from the sediment at the bottom of the lake. Sediments are comparatively stuffed with nutrients, and the lack of light and cold aren't much of a problem (there is probably stuff growing [jamstec.go.jp] at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, just very slowly).
Re:Nutrients (Score:5, Interesting)
So what exactly do they suspect these bacteria have been eating down there in the deep dark cold?
Cthulhu has been feeding them bits of the Snickers bar he was given as campaign contribution... Or perhaps he's been feeding them bits of the campaign contributors themselves.
But seriously, a background of 10 critters / cc isn't all that 'clean' and
Bulat and his colleagues counted the microbes present in the ice sample and checked their genetic makeup to figure out the phylotypes. They counted fewer than 10 microbes/ml — about the same magnitude they would expect to find in the background in their clean room. And three of the four phylotypes they identified matched contaminants from the drilling oil, with the fourth unknown but also most likely from the lubricant.
points to one of the bigger concerns about this experiment - you are going to contaminate the lake at this point as the drilling technology is pretty primitive - basically pouring hot water into a hole.
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As the AC mentioned: why are they using drilling oil and lubricants. I understood that the reason they were drilling a new hole (rather than the one the Russians started) was that they wanted it completely clean, with no oils or lubricants contaminating it.
Furthermore, if you're ruling out the "unknown" microbe you find as probably being from the lubricant, then what do you hope to achieve with the experiment?
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magnetic field lines
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Yes, and the reason that there is not a significant amount of bacteria in a clean room is because there is nothing for them to eat.
So really this shouldn't be a surprise since one should ask, if there are no nutrients in the water why should we expect there to be bacteria there?
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The article is concluding that there are zero microbes down there, so any nutrients present would be irrelevant.
The article states that the 10 microbes per mL figure is likely due to contaminants being carried down on the drill or present in the measuring equipment, because it is similar to the levels found in a clean room environment.
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The article states that the 10 microbes per mL figure is likely due to contaminants being carried down on the drill or present in the measuring equipment, because it is similar to the levels found in a clean room environment.
My guess is that the unit of measure is wrong. It should be 10 microbes per MICROliter (not milliliter!), as 10000 microbes per microliter is actually very stinky water!!
Current regulations in Argentina allow for a maximum of 20 microbes per microliter in drinkable water (and zero enterobacteria).
The problem is that greek letters (eg: mu) are not easily displayed (as in this same post!).
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Miscalculation, there.
10 microbes/ml * 1 ml/1000 ul = 0.01 microbes/ul, not 10,000/ul.
So yeah, it's probably correct as originally written. I was a little surprised that 10 per ml is clean room levels, though, but I don't work in or near one.
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How silly I am! My mistake. And my point is weakened, but still valid.
Regulations in Argentina call for a maximum of "2 microbes / 100 mL". That is 0.02 microbes/ml and is correct (I hope this time it is!).
So at 10 microbes/ml = 1000 microbes / 100 mL the water from this lake is not allowed for dinking in Argentina.
I am a biologist working at a molecular biology lab. One test I did on water from a mountain river surrounded only by wildlife had 23 microbes / 100 mL, and that is clearly not a clean room! Anot
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Yeah, I agree with you that number seems off. TFA has a little more insight, though. This is a sample from ice carried back on the drill bit, and they found a total of four microbes on it - three of which matched contamination from the drilling oil, and they suspect the fourth is as well. Maybe they only recovered 0.4 mL of water total - but then, why not report it that way?
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My mistake too. I just re-read TFA - it's three out of the four phylotypes that matched, not three out of four total microbes.
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The article is concluding that there are zero microbes down there, so any nutrients present would be irrelevant
If there is no food you will not find things eating said food.
Steamboy (Score:1)
We should probably take the opportunity to make Steamboy [wikipedia.org] a reality now.
Arrogant Scientists (Score:2)
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yes, and all antarctic camps are equipped with a length of copper wire, flamethrower and dynamite for that reason. Anyone refusing the copper wire blood test is incinerated as a precaution
More Importantly? (Score:4, Funny)
Did they find water on Antarctica?
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Nah, just all this white stuff.
Continued Domininance (Score:5, Funny)
I for one welcome our continued dominance of Earth.
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Well... (no pun inteded) (Score:1)
... I'm sure there's bacteria down there now from the Drill Bit.... DOH!
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Wait'll They Find ... THE GATE! (Score:2)