SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
Ancient organisms found
alive in salt crystals
January 20 – 26, 2011
The Epoch Times
14
Study may shed light on life
exploration in space
By STEPHANIE LAM
Epoch Times Staff
Scientists have found prokaryotes
believed to have been alive when
trapped in salt crystals 34,000 years
ago, according to a study published
this month in The Geological Society of America’s open-access journal
GSA Today.
“Microbes are known to exist in
subsurface habitats, such as sub-seafloor sediments and continental and
oceanic crust, to depths of up to 3
kilometres,” the paper reads.
“Prokaryotes (single-celled organisms lacking a nucleus and other
membrane-bound specialized structures) in these subsurface environments live in water within sediment
pores and rock fractures.”
Organisms have also been found
in glaciers up to 8 million years old,
according to the paper.
“Collectively, these discoveries have
extended the realm of the biosphere
into earth’s crust and have given hope
for finding life beneath the surface of
other planets, moons, asteroids, and
comets of our solar system where
present surface conditions are inhospitable,” the paper reads.
The researchers, Drs. Tim Lowenstein and Michael Timofeeff of the
State University of New York at Binghamton, and Dr. Brian Schubert of
University of Hawaii at Manoa (Ph.D.
student at the State University of New
York at Binghamton at the time of the
study), found organisms trapped in
fluid inclusions—microscopic areas
of droplets of water—within salt crystals, and were able to grow them in a
laboratory setting.
“The organisms are called archaea,
one of the two prokaryote domains
(the other is bacteria),” Lowenstein
told The Epoch Times.
“We were the first group to look inside
the salts before we tried to culture microbes from them,” Timofeeff added.
“They are trapped alongside a type
of algae called Dunaliella, which just
so happens to produce the food the
archaea need to survive—the sugar
alcohol glycerol,” Lowenstein said,
explaining how the organisms could
survive for so long.
However, light cannot enter the
crystals, so the algae didn’t survive,
and the archaea were left only with
whatever glycerol the algae had the
moment they were trapped. As the
archaea were in an isolated system,
reproduction would be hard, leading
the researchers to believe that the organisms they found alive are the same
ones trapped in the crystals 34,000
years ago and not their descendants.
“They can reproduce, but at some
point they will use up their available
resources and conditions for life will be-
come unfavourable,” Timofeeff said.
Compared with their modern
counterparts, these ancient organisms are rounder and smaller.
“We believe this is evidence that
the cells have moved into a starvation survival mode and miniaturized,” Timofeeff said. “When conditions for life become unfavourable,
some microbes are able to move
into a starvation survival mode and
miniaturize.”
Salt crystals that are 63,000 years
old containing microbes were found
along with the 34,000-year-old ones,
but the researchers weren’t sure if
the organisms in them were alive.
“The only way we can be 100 percent sure that any microbe we observe inside of a fluid inclusion is
alive is to give it conditions favourable for growth and see if it does,”
Timofeeff said.
“There are a number of reasons
why a microbe trapped inside an inclusion might not grow. The factors
for survivability are not well known.
We do know they should have enough
glycerol to make it.”
The researchers also noted that an
earlier study has claimed the finding
of a bacterium trapped in a crystal
formed in the Permian period (299
million to 251 million years ago), but
the study is controversial as some believe the bacterium is a contaminant
from the laboratory.
“Although we are beginning to understand the community of microorganisms inside modern and ancient
fluid inclusions, much more needs
to be learned about how they sur-
A highly magnified microscopic
view of relatively large algae (white
arrows) and smaller prokaryotes
(black arrows). brian schubert
vive,” the researchers concluded in
their paper.
“Such knowledge will be vital as
studies further explore deep life on
earth and elsewhere in the solar system, where materials that potentially
harbour microorganisms are millions
and even billions of years old.”
To read the research paper please visit
http://bit.ly/eqWOCp.
NASA telescope detects antimatter-projecting thunderstorm
By JACK PHILLIPS
Epoch Times Staff
Antimatter storms may actually
be taking place on earth, scientists said after NASA’s Fermi telescope detected a thunderstorm
shooting beams of antimatter
into space, a phenomenon never
spotted before.
Thunderstorms have been
known to produce sparks of light
called terrestrial gamma-ray
flashes (TGFs), usually associated
with lightning. Gamma rays are
high-energy electromagnetic radiation or light.
“These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms
make antimatter particle beams,”
stated Michael Briggs, a member of Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst
Monitor team at University of Alabama, in a press release earlier
this month.
Antimatter comprises positron
particles, with the same mass as
electrons (matter) but with opposite charges and magnetic properties. When matter meets antimatter, the particles annihilate each
other, releasing TGFs.
The Fermi telescope, which orbits in space, monitors gamma
rays. It was above Egypt when it
detected TGFs originating from
a thunderstorm almost 4,850 kilometres away in Zambia.
“Even though Fermi couldn’t
see the storm, the spacecraft nevertheless was magnetically connected to it,” Joseph Dwyer at
Florida Institute of Technology
On Dec. 14, 2009, while NASA’s Fermi telescope flew over Egypt, the spacecraft intercepted a particle beam from a
terrestrial gamma-ray flash that occurred over its horizon. nasa’s goddard space flight center
said in the release.
“The TGF produced high-speed
electrons and positrons, which
then rode up earth’s magnetic
By DAVID SKOUMBOURDIS
Being in a good mood can enhance
one’s creative thinking ability, a recent
study found.
The study was conducted by researchers at University of Western Ontario (UWO) who focused on a particular type of learning that is improved by
creative thinking.
“Generally, positive mood has been
found to enhance creative problem solving and flexible yet careful thinking,”
said Ruby Nadler in a press release.
Nadler is a UWO graduate student
and co-author of the study published
in the December 2010 edition of the
Association for Psychological Science
journal, Psychological Science.
The study entailed inducing a positive, negative, or neutral mood in subjects and then having them perform
By STEPHANIE LAM
Epoch Times Staff
A video showing a girl levitating in the woods, supposedly
filmed in Russia, has recently
attracted a lot of attention on
the Internet.
The video, titled “Flying girl
in Russian woods,” was posted
by YouTube user Jevgenij2000
on March 2, 2009. It has attracted over 137,000 views to
date, with most views being
after Jan. 4, 2011.
“I have [recorded] this video
while going for a long walk with
my dog. I [can’t] explain myself
what was [happening] there,”
Jevgenij2000 wrote in the video
description.
The video, which runs for 44
seconds, initially shows him
playing fetch with his dog. Then
off to the right appears a little
girl floating in the air, in horizontal position with her upper
body slightly elevated. A lady,
standing on the ground close to
the girl, is watching her.
The dog barks, and the girl
quickly descends and runs away
with the lady.
Buddhist and Daoist cultivation practices believe that people who have cultivated well
and have opened their merid-
A screen shot of the video
showing the girl in the air. the
epoch times
ian channels are able to levitate
and fly.
The video can be viewed at http://
bit.ly/a6tQdJ.
Science Matters
Vol. 13, No. 3
January 18, 2011
11
Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author,
and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and Dr.
Faisal Moola is the Director of Science at
the David Suzuki Foundation.
Is there a cure for
the bluefin blues?
By DAVID SUZUKI with FAISAL MOOLA
field to strike the spacecraft.”
Since 2008, Fermi has spotted 130 TGFs. Up to 500 of these
incidents may take place daily
around the world but mostly go
undetected. Scientists do not yet
understand the role of lightning
in the process.
Positivity can spark creativity, researchers say
Epoch Times Staff
Flying girl in Russia?
‘If you have a project where
you want to think innovatively,
or you have a problem to
carefully consider, being in a
positive mood can help you
to do that.’ — Ruby Nadler
a learning task that requires them to
classify visually complex patterns.
To manipulate mood, researchers
had the volunteers listen to music and
watch video clips. This required initially trialing what made subjects happiest and saddest.
The media ranged from a video
of a laughing baby to a sad piece of
music from the “Schindler’s List”
movie. After listening to the music
and watching the videos, people were
asked to classify a visual pattern.
Volunteers in a happy mood were
more apt at classifying the patterns
than those who were either neutral
or sad.
“If you have a project where you
want to think innovatively, or you
have a problem to carefully consider,
being in a positive mood can help
you to do that,” Nadler said.
Nadler believes that one reason
people like to watch funny videos
at work may be that they are subconsciously trying to put themselves
into a positive mood. This is potentially good news for employers concerned about such apparent wasting
of time.
A recent study has found that
being in a positive mood can help
enhance creative problem solving
as well as flexible yet careful
thinking. photos.com
The bluefin tuna is extremely valuable. One fish weighing about 340
kilograms sold for almost $400,000 in Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market
in early January. But that’s just the market value—e which, sadly,
appears to be the only value taken into account when we consider
the bluefin or any other “resource.”
The bluefin is economically valuable for a number of reasons. It’s very
tasty, prized by sushi lovers the world over, especially in Japan. Sports
fishers like them because they are powerful and fast and put up a good
fight. Unfortunately, the main reason they are commanding such high
prices is that they have become precariously rare.
The bluefin tuna is unusual. Unlike most fish, it is warm-blooded,
which allows it to migrate great distances, from the cold waters off Iceland to the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean.
Their unique colouring—steely blue on top and silvery white on the
bottom—camouflages them from predators above and below. They can
move at speeds up to 70 kilometres an hour, thanks to their sleek shape
and ability to retract their dorsal and pectoral fins. They have large appetites, satisfied by a varied diet consisting of smaller fish, crustaceans,
eels, squid, and sometimes even kelp.
In the 1970s, increasing demand and prices led fishing companies to
find more efficient ways to harvest bluefin. Stocks, especially of breeding-age fish, have since plummeted by more than 80 percent over the
past 40 years. The bluefin is listed by the International Union for the
Conservation of Nature as “critically endangered.” Although this has led
to some conservation efforts, continued legal and illegal fishing of the
bluefin is pushing the fish closer to the edge. Last year, Japan led other
nations to vote at the United Nations’ Convention on International Trade
in Endangered Species against a ban on fishing for bluefin.
And so, bluefin tuna continues to draw bidders at Tsukiji, the world’s
largest fish market. In the more than two decades since my first visit
there, I’ve been amazed by the decrease in average size and in abundance of species such as bluefin, and by the fact that seafood in Japan
is brought to market from all over the planet.
In view of pronouncements by scientists about the imminent extinction of bluefin tuna and the possible emptying of oceans by mid-century,
I recently asked some Japanese people to imagine their country without
fish. “Fish are your history, your culture, your very physical makeup,” I
said. But when I asked why Japan isn’t then leading the fight to protect
the world’s oceans I was met by blank stares—and this from people who
are environmentally aware. Globalization has allowed Japan to live on
fish plundered from around the world, whereas only a century ago they
lived on what their local waters contained.
One problem is the way we look at economics. There is no competing market for conservation of biodiversity—no one is willing to pay
$400,000 to have fishermen leave this fish alone. Given the current
demand—and prices—for bluefin tuna, it would be economically profitable to catch the very last fish. It would be worth someone’s time to fish
for four years just to land a single tuna. Meanwhile, other less desirable fish stocks for which there are market substitutes tend to become
unprofitable when the stocks get too low because the expense to catch
them is greater than the market price.
Governments worldwide have contributed to the overexploitation of
the bluefin and many other fish by subsidizing the commercial fishing industry with billions of dollars every year, much of it to build and
modernize fishing vessels.
We must continue to call for a ban on fishing for bluefin and other
endangered species and push for better regulation and enforcement
when it comes to global fisheries. As consumers, we should also increase
our awareness about seafood, and avoid eating fish that are in danger.
If people in countries like Japan and China were to get serious about
sustainable seafood, that would help as well. It would also be great if
we could shift our thinking about economics to include the value of
conservation and the services that ecosystems and plants and animals
provide for us.
Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.