Posted on 12/22/2006 7:30:06 PM PST by WestVirginiaRebel
Berkeley-For 11 years, Jill Banfield at the University of California, Berkeley, has collected and studied the microbes that slime the floors of mines and convert iron to acid, a common source of stream pollution around the world.
Imagine her surprise, then, when research scientists Brett Baker discovered three new microbes living amidst the bacteria she thought she knew well. All three were so small-the size of large viruses-as to be virtually invisible under a microscope, and belonged to a totally new phylum of Archaea, microorganisms that have been around for billions of years.
(Excerpt) Read more at spaceref.com ...
phylum, Dan O...
really cool small stuff, your favorite!
Fascinating.
Uh, I read that last word wrong at first.
Like discovering that the little 'fleas' that feed on the fleas that feed on you, have smaller 'fleas' yet, parasitising them...
slime the floors of mines and convert iron to acid, a common source of stream pollution around the world...a totally new phylum of Archaea
Named for Arches National Park, because the acid eats away the iron in the sandstone, leaving the sillyca-cemented grains, thus forming the arches over aeons of time.
Running, while ducking a hail of meadow muffins, and asking, "was that small enough?". ;-)
LOL
Like what bunnies have?
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I first heard of nanobacteria when the scientists who examined the Allen Hills martian meteorite presented a paper on their findings. It looks like they found fossil evidence of nanobacteria inside a rock that originated on Mars. Its possible that many human diseases are caused by bacteria that are so small we can't detect them and which are hard to culture.
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