Worms frozen in permafrost for up to 42,000 years come back to life (opens in new tab)

From Wikipedia: Tardigrades are considered to be able to survive even complete global mass extinction events due to astrophysical events, such as gamma-ray bursts, or large meteorite impacts. Some of them can withstand extremely cold temperatures down to 1 K (−458 °F; −272 °C) (close to absolute zero), while others can withstand extremely hot temperatures up to 420 K (300 °F; 150 °C) for several minutes, pressures about six times greater than those found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose for a human, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go without food or water for more than 30 years, drying out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce. Tardigrades that live in harsh conditions undergo an annual process of cyclomorphosis, allowing for survival in sub-zero temperatures.

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

Then plants also qualify.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/02/120221-olde...

> We analyzed more than 300 samples of permafrost deposits of different ages and origins, buried soils and fossil rodent burrows. Two samples were shown to contain viable nematodes.

Why the article was published just now (the samples were taken in 2015) is a most interesting question. Probably related with the current rush to explore the martian ice pole to find life. The siberian experts would add a invaluable experience in how to attack this drill problem avoiding contamination of the sample, and taking a undisturbed core-layers of ice to date it and understand the past climate of mars.

I thought shock frosting meant -18°C.

https://news.rambler.ru/other/40414227-chervi-s-kolymy-prish...

the affiliations list top Russian schools as well as Princeton.

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/10...

So that's at 13.1 degrees, quote from the end of that paper:

"Our results indicate that short fragments of DNA could be present for a very long time; at –5°C, the model predicts a half-life of 158 000 years for a 30 bp mtDNA fragment in bone (table 1). Even rough estimates such as this imply that sequenceable bone DNA fragments may still be present more than 1 Myr after deposition in deep frozen environments. It therefore seems reasonable to suggest that future research may identify authentic DNA that is significantly older than the current record of approximately 450–800 kyr from Greenlandic ice cores".

So even if they don't have a thermal model where you plug in any temperature and it will give you the half life there is good evidence that lower temperatures significantly increase the chances of DNA remaining intact for much longer than the above-zero half life would suggest.

Bacteria in the permafrost have been found to have been repairing their DNA for almost half a million years. IIRC they aren't really active, they don't reproduce at all, only a very minimal level of metabolism is maintained to repair occuring damage in the cell.

The Worms could be similar. Being frozen, they merely shut down everything but the absolute minimum of metabolism, likely powered by minute temperature differences or incoming light from the outside or many of the other options, just enough to keep the DNA and cell intact, the worm itself would likely be considered dead in it's frozen state.

But they are waiting.

At low temperatures (the lower you go) and low radiation (the lower you go) there is not enough energy in the system to exceed activation energy and break down DNA (meaning statistically it's extremely unlikely (arbitrarily) for enough energy to enter the system in a short enough period of time to break down the structure) (there's always the minuscule chance that some wavefunction posits enough energy into the system of course).

There are colonial organisms over 40,000 years old.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organis...

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/268/5213/1060

http://www.extremescience.com/OldestLivingThing.htm

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

It's like taking a DOS virus and expecting it to infect iphones :)

I still believe the planetary ecosystem has a way of ridding itself of annoying biomass if a tipping point is reached. Who knows what will hit us and how fast it will hit us.

Permafrost viruses, dramatic temperature changes and generally more energy in the weather system due to global warming, catastrophic ocean acidification leading to the death of trillions and trillions of plankton, robbing us of oxygen to breathe.... there's likely a trove of "problems" we will face sooner rather than later.

https://mobile.twitter.com/doreen_michele/status/10226461705...