Was an ancient bacterium awakened by an industrial accident? | Hacker News Reader

Was an ancient bacterium awakened by an industrial accident?

economist.com

73 pointsbookofjoe54 comments

You should read the description of the accident:

“Over the next few days the resulting man-made sinkhole swallowed up the oil rig, 11 barges, a tugboat, 35 hectares of land and part of a house. A canal that drained the lake into the Gulf of Mexico began flowing backwards as the water level fell, briefly creating the tallest waterfall in Louisiana, while muddy geysers erupted from mine shafts. Somehow, all 50 people working in the mine managed to get out ahead of the rising floodwaters.”

Also fascinating because we have video footage of it, and it’s as crazy as it sounds.

Quick 8-minute documentary on it that I found interesting: https://youtu.be/p_iZr2-Coqc?si=kthsdehqzJlvDfkg

There is a similar disaster unfolding in Brazil now[1]. The company Braskem has an ongoing rock salt mining operation under Maceió city for about 40 years. Some years ago sections of the mine started collapsing. Some neighborhoods started sinking and had to be completely vacated. A few days ago another part of the mine collapsed, draining waters from Mundaú lagoon. It was not completely drained, but it was caught on video[2]:

[1] https://g1.globo.com/al/alagoas/noticia/2023/07/22/tremor-ra...

[2] https://g1.globo.com/al/alagoas/noticia/2023/12/10/rompiment...

The linked articles are in Portuguese, but automatic translation should work fine on them.

https://archive.ph/yckFV

Article mentions another bacteria thats rated as world's toughest - Deinococcus radiodurans. Hell it survived 3 years in outer space and high doses of gamma radiation, with that logic we most probably already (re?)introduced life on Mars.

> Deinococcus radiodurans has a unique quality in which it can repair both single- and double-stranded DNA. When damage is apparent to the cell, it brings the damaged DNA into a compartmental ring-like structure where the DNA is repaired, and then is able to fuse the nucleoids from the outside of the compartment with the damaged DNA.

That's super interesting. Though I am waiting for the longevity hackers to CRISPR that into themselves. If it works out, great. If not, another lesson for the ages.

Well this is just fascinating. 280 million years is a lot of time if you only really need one instance of reheating/hydrating to grow for a bit and reset before settling in for another long sleep.

>When cultured and exposed to ionizing radiations in liquid media, Deinococcus radiodurans could survive up to 25 kGy.[40] Horne et al. (2022) have studied the effects of desiccation and freezing on the microbial survivability to ionizing radiations considering the feasibility studies to return Martian subsurface soil samples for microbial characterization and for determining the most favorable landing sites of a future robotic exploration mission.[41] They found that the desiccated and frozen cells could resist to a 5.6 higher radiation dose: up to 140 kGy. They calculated that this could correspond to a theoretical survival time of 280 million years at a depth of 33 feet (10 m) below the present Mars surface. However, this time scale is too short to allow microbial survival at a depth accessible to a rover equipped with a drilling system below the Martian surface when compared to the moment when liquid water disappeared from the Martian surface (2 – 2.5 Ga ago). Nevertheless, Horne et al. (2022) consider the hypothesis that meteorite impacts could have dispersed Martian soil and heated locally the subsurface during the geological history of Mars, heating sporadically from time to time the local environment, melting the frozen ice and giving perhaps a chance to a hypothetical distant Martian extremophile resembling its terrestrial cousin Deinococcus radiodurans to grow again for short moment before to rapidly become again frozen and dormant for millions of years. So, for returning subsurface soil samples from Mars for microbial characterization with a potentially "successful" mission like the European Rosalind Franklin rover, it would be necessary to target a relatively young impact crater to increase the chances of discovering dormant extremophile micro-organisms surviving in the dry and frozen Martian subsurface environment relatively protected from the lethal ionizing radiations.[40]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans#Clues_...

It also has multiple backup copies of the genome, and there some other (more speculative?) mechanisms listed here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans#Mechan...

> with that logic we most probably already (re?)introduced life on Mars.

It's not unlikely that all the solar system's planets have been contaminating each other for billions of years. All it takes is a big asteroid impact and some luck, and then some bacteria hitches a ride.

The tough part is of course thriving after the organism arrives. Given Mars' current climate and surface perchlorate levels, I'm not convinced it's likely that something from here takes root over there without some help.

I'm always intrigued by this. How big a rock would need to impact to throw a chunk all the way up Earth's gravity well? And does escape velocity create the same kind of atmospheric friction problems that re-entry does (so it'll need to be a big chunk or the bacterium needs to resist extreme heat)?

The whole chain of "really big rock -> chunk of Earth leaving the gravity well -> getting into some kind of stable orbit where it can be pulled into Mars -> surviving re-entry on Mars" doesn't seem like it would happen enough times to create the kind of odds of success that would be needed for a bacterium to successfully colonise Mars.

> does escape velocity create the same kind of atmospheric friction problems

Yes; but those temperatures may not penetrate deep into the body of the rock; so there still might be biology surviving.

It's also possible that life originated on Mars (back when it was young and much more conducive to life) and was then introduced to Earth. Or, that life bounced back and forth between the planets as each was affected by large sterilizing impacts in the early solar system, the other acting as a refugee from which the sterilized sister planet could be reinoculated.

Kurzgesagt recently had an interesting video on how life might have been everywhere when the universe was still young and essentially every inch of it had temperatures to support it.

The bit that sold me on the idea was when they noted that the complexity of life seems to double every 250m years. But apparently if you roll with that assumption and extrapolate all the way back to the simplest conceivable organism, you end up at time when earth didn't exist and the universe was young.

This reinforces my deep conviction that life will find a way, no matter what mischief we get up to.

Even if it has to tap into its reserves...

Yes, killing all life would be indeed really hard. But killing all "advanced" life, is quite possible on the other hand.

And destroying ecosystems which are essential for our own species to survive is "we are well on our way to it".

Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds [0] and it is expected to happen again in the next 50 years.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/30/humanity...

I'm not sure we could extinguish all life on earth even if we wanted to, much less by accident via what we're doing now.

We can certainly do a number on a lot of the big names though.

That getting up to mischief . . . is part of life, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo3R3LBjDek

Absolutely!

And if it really is a global extinction event at the moment, I can't wait to see what wonderful new variants will blossom from that tabula rasa in ten to twenty million years.

Will they be less conscious or more, more or less social, more or less intelligent, more distributed intelligence like in insect societies?

Will they be smaller, smarter, more vicious?

No doubt, a deep valley is surrounded by high hills.

This is why "save the earth" is a silly slogan. The Earth doesn't need saving. An environment suitable for humans on the other hand...

it's not literal. we're in a mass extinction that's only going to get worse. earth as shorthand for the environment that supports all these creatures (including us).

This is also misleading. What's disappearing is a sustainable environment suitable for humans without advanced technology and globalized trade.

Humans are living in climate-controlled environments in Phoenix, but they wouldn't last long without (fossil-fuel based) external energy sources. Or at least there wouldn't be that many.

not really, Venus is an example of self reinforcing mechanism that will inadvertently destroy every ecosystem. Even though Venus is inside the goldilock zone.

Besides the whole argument, the life will find a way is hardly encouraging. Its not a win for us I am not sure how its an argument for anything but being painfully obnoxious.

Oh, come on, give life a chance, it can't always be me, me, me.

Earth does not have nearly enough available carbon to start a greenhouse feedback loop. It won’t be at risk of Venusification for about a billion years until the Sun gets a lot hotter.

This sounds very much like the plot to at least one X-Files episode.

https://x-files.fandom.com/wiki/Purity

Not exactly, but it fits the trope of Nightmare Fuel. Not to speak of, the setting is in Louisiana.

https://x-files.fandom.com/wiki/Firewalker Was more what came to my mind.

It's everywhere, they clearly were on to something out there.

tl;dr - A lake flooding a salt mine might have revived a salt-loving (halophile) bacterium (archaea?) - Halobacteriales - that might have been present in spore form or other hibernation.

Side note : extremophiles are fascinating as they each have 'superpowers' - like tolerating 25% salt, or above-boiling water, or very cold. The way they do this is varied, and includes changing the balance of lipids in their cell membrane to change the mechanical properties of it. Or altering enzymes to make them more heat-resistant by tying the ends together.

We agree they are fascinating. I always found the term extremophile a bit anthropocentric though. From such a life form, living in "so cold/salted/whatever" environment will look extreme.

They live on the extremes of the physical conditions under which life is found on earth, that's not anthropocentric.

I think the point is that to that lifeform it's perfectly normal humans calling it 'extreme' is what makes it anthropocentric. To those lifeforms our environment would be 'extreme'.

But it's not just humans that the environment is extreme to, it's every other species of life on Earth besides the few that are adapted to it.

nah. there are literally thousands of types of bugs in the rainforest, ones we're still just identifying.

meanwhile there are just a handful of these extremophiles, and they're often just bacteria, and limited to just a few areas. they are objectively rare, and that's not a "humans looking at them" thing.

Never heard of that catastrophe, but an oil rig digging into a mine under a lake is pretty terrible.

Yeah, never mind that it's a bad idea to have a mine under a lake, it's an even worse idea to authorize drilling for oil in the lake over the mine. I would love to read a report on how that came about. But apparently there's little hope to find that out: according to Wikipedia, "The Mine Safety and Health Administration released a report on the disaster in August 1981 which exhaustively documented the event but stopped short of identifying an official reason for the disaster."

Salt mines are under lakes as anyone in the state of LA due numerous disasters in that state due to salt mines under lakes.

Actually, salt mines are subject to collapse of the overlying rock, which can create sinkholes at the surface as the collapse propagates upwards. So putting them under lakes means you're not risking destroying someones home.

How do I know this? There's a major salt mine under Lansing, New York (just north of Ithaca) that's doing most of its expansion under Cayuga Lake for just this reason.

https://www.cargill.com/industrial/winter-road-maintenance/c...

(Cargill has another mine under Lake Erie, and deliberately flooded a mine in Louisiana recently. They're trying to get out of the salt mining business, though.)

There's a freight spur line on the west side of Ithaca that is the sole remaining rail connection to the city. Its sole purpose these days is carrying salt from that mine (it used to also carry coal to a power plant up the side of the lake, but that plant was shut down.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca_Central_Railroad

huh used to swim in that lake during summer camps. kinda miss the Ithaca Commons, too, but it's been a while.

If you want to read of another fun fuck up, read about the time mankind set light to the coal seam under Centralia in 1962. It's predicted to burn for another 250 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire

So they have there a free natural vapor machine and nobody is using it??

Talking about Pennsylvania coal mining, they already had experimented with mining under bodies of water in 1959. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox_Mine_disaster

It was only logical to fuel the research project in Centralia with fire.

The famous Hashima island (also called "Battleship island") in Japan near Nagasaki was an undersea coal mine - the network of tunnels even connected to another mining island nearby.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashima_Island

I don't think they ever had problems with flooding from the sea, but it was certainly dangerous enough to work there due to regular mining and industrial hazards. Also apparently it was very hot and humid in the mine.

From that Wikipedia page, Japan has renegged on their deal to admit forced labor occured there.

Why the hold up? if it's common knowledge, why deny it?

because japan.

and probably reparations

They do mention the forced labor during the guided tours of the island BTW.

The claim on Wikipedia seems to be they have not done so to the satisfaction of the other unesco members who had to vote for its inclusion as a heritage site.

One of the ways that was planned to mine undersea coal was in situ gasification: basically, start a Centralia-like fire, pump down oxygen and steam, and recover the mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen for use as a fuel. If it's undersea then the risk of uncontrolled introduction of air (as occurs at Centralia) is reduced.

This has also happened naturally all over in places around the world. There is one in Australia that allegedly will burn for longer than a million years.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire

Sounds like a 2025 summer blockbuster.

If anyone else out there was put off by the potential for the title to conform to Betteridge’s Law of Headlines (“Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no”), you can rest easy. This one is a “maybe”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli...

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