Comments on: Newly Discovered Bacterium Lives on Radioactive Decay

By: Christian

Christian — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 19:31:57 +0000

Reminds me of all the talk of life on Europe … I was looking that up and found out that some people are looking for life on Titan, another one of Saturn’s moons that’s covered in methane. Ugh.

That Astrobiology Magazine website is kinda wild, actually … they have a place where you can apparently download each of their magazine articles in text-to-speech. It doesn’t actually work.

By: Christian

Christian — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 19:32:34 +0000

I meant life on Europa.

Because seriously, is there really life in Europe? Please.

By: Christian

Christian — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 19:32:58 +0000

http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2070

By: monkey

monkey — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 21:41:49 +0000

C’mon, methane just has a bad rep. Pure methane is, in fact, odorless. It’s just often mixed with smelly stuff. Who knows what the methane on Europa smells like?

I’ve thought of doing podcasts with text-to-speech, just to be hideously geeky. Windows has a variety of voices, one of which is identical to the one that Family Guy used on a character that was a spoof of Steven Hawking. Maybe it’s Steven Hawking’s voice too…? Who knows.

Incidentally, I read that Steven Hawking may be back on the market the other day: Marriage in Black Hole

By: Mac

Mac — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 01:26:51 +0000

So…Is it possible to harness these radioactivity-loving bacteria to decontaminate radioactive waste?

By: Christian

Christian — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 02:31:53 +0000

Methane on Europa! I will chalk that up to a typo. You mean Titan of course

By: Aaron

Aaron — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 18:30:08 +0000

This is definitely one of the neatest discoveries in a long time.

I bet the creationists & intelligent designers are trying their best to ignore this.

By: monkey

monkey — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 18:47:31 +0000

Good point. This may not have made it into the larger media outlets for a reason!

By: monkey

monkey — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 18:47:53 +0000

It’s possible that these could be used to decontaminate radioactive waste, but they have yet to grow these bacteria in the lab, so they may be difficult to work with. Another group of bacteria associated with radioactivity are Deinococcus spp. They are extremely radiation-resistant and many groups are trying to engineer them to bioremediate environments contaminated with radioactivity.