4mo ago

Hundreds of Ancient Viruses Discovered Deep Inside Tibetan Glacier

e360.yale.edu Hundreds of Ancient Viruses Discovered Deep Inside Tibetan Glacier

Scientists have unearthed the remnants of more than 1,700 viruses from deep inside a glacier in western China. Most of these viruses are new to science.

With this discovery, the number of ancient viruses recovered from glaciers has grown fiftyfold.The viruses, gathered from a 1,000-foot ice core taken from the sprawling Guliya Glacier on the Tibetan Plateau, date back 41,000 years and span three major shifts from cold to warm.

Science @beehaw.org

e360.yale.edu /digest/ancient-viruses-glacier-climate-change

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40 comments

those only infect Windows 3.0 on i486

This is one of those headlines that feels like it should be in the opening montage of a disaster movie.
- We've got the perfect global pandemic movie post-credits section.
  Accelerating climate change and also the denial
  Economic recession and increasing wealth gap
  Myopic leadership both in government and corporate, rise of fascism
  Misinformation campaigns, science and history denial becoming fashionable
  Harambe
  We're truly fucked.

Cool we were running out of new ones.
- New to us.
  
  time to get reacqaaaaainted
  
  new meaning to retrovirus

So they are "retro" viruses
- Bringing back the classics!
- These viruses used to be so cool back in the day

Hey how about we put those the fuck back where they were and just make pretend viruses in Plague Inc. We don't need to unleash the ancient virus that'll make us shit our own brains out
- Put them back? Have you seen glaciers recently? They somehow don't like to stay frozen
  
  Good point, launch the frozen demon core into the sun

It's cool covid prepped us to do nothing, lose, and declare victory between coughs. We got this 💪

The optimist in me wants to think that maybe one of those viruses can be used to cure some other diseases via genetic modification.
The pessimistic part of me wonders if this will be the start of a pandemic cycle that never ends until most people are dead.
I want it to be the first one please.
- The world could use the second one.... I also want to live and I don't want people to die but the earth could use less humans.
  
  As we saw with the COVID pandemic, even in "1st world countries", poorer people were disproportionately affected. Fewer humans won't help when the majority of harm to the Earth is perpetuated by a small fraction who would be disproportionately represented in a world where the majority of people died.
  I sympathise with your sentiment, because it often does feel like humans are the problem, but the reality is that we're not. Although it can feel weirdly comforting to think of humans as inherently and innately destructive, thinking this way is a pipeline to eco-fascism, which doesn't offer productive ways forward.

Ancient viruses?! We’re all gonna die!
- True, but all it takes is one.

The fun is just starting. Only a matter of time until the glaciers melt even more and release untold hell upon us!

Oooh oooh! I remember this X Files episode!
- Great episode. Also, the movie The Thaw.

So that Zombie apocalypse could still happen.
- Just remember the 33 rules of zombie survival
  
  Isn't there rule 34?

So, the Andromeda Strain was a documentary?

There's a voice inside me that says, "Do it."
- Bring lemonade.

Can't wait for us to figure out one of them is still virulent, and it's out in the world now being passed around.
- Well, they were discovered in China, so it won’t take long, but they won’t tell anyone until it’s been spread to other countries.

Leave. Them. Alone.
I mean …

For the love of god, DON’T!
- There is no god, so I'll just go ahead then.

So, when do we start building robots to preserve humanity?

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40 comments