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...Permafrost covers a fifth of the Northern Hemisphere, having underpinned the Arctic tundra and boreal forests of Alaska, Canada and Russia for millennia. It serves as a kind of time capsule, preserving ... ancient viruses. \ ...The virus hunter Claverie studies a particular type of virus he first discovered in 2003.... / ...In 2014, he managed to revive a virus he and his team isolated from the permafrost, making it infectious for the first time in 30,000 years by inserting it into cultured cells. ... Precedent for human infection Traces of viruses and bacteria that can infect humans have been...

Ancient microbial life on Mars could have destroyed the planet’s atmosphere through climate change, which ultimately led to its extinction, new research has suggested. The new theory comes from a climate modeling study that simulated hydrogen-consuming, methane-producing microbes living on Mars roughly 3.7 billion years ago. At the time, atmospheric conditions were similar to those that existed on ancient Earth during the same period. But instead of creating an environment that would help them thrive and evolve, as happened on Earth, Martian microbes may have doomed themselves just as they were getting started, according to the study published Oct. 10...

Via Snapped Shot and STACLU comes news that Iowa state officials have banned the use of tea by Tea Party protesters holding an event tomorrow in Cedar Rapids. The tea violates environmental standards because it will discolor the water: A Cedar Rapids group will do a symbolic tea dumping into the Cedar River on Saturday because state officials won’t let them use the real thing. An anti-tax group wanted to pitch in real tea like the Bostonian revolutionaries opposed to England’s tea taxes. Tea, although natural and quite tasty, is considered a pollutant that can’t go into a body of...