Scientists have unearthed the remnants of more than 1,700 viruses from deep inside a glacier in western China. Most of these viruses are new to science.

With this discovery, the number of ancient viruses recovered from glaciers has grown fiftyfold.The viruses, gathered from a 1,000-foot ice core taken from the sprawling Guliya Glacier on the Tibetan Plateau, date back 41,000 years and span three major shifts from cold to warm.

  • JovialMicrobial@lemm.eeEnglish
    12·
    3 months ago

    The optimist in me wants to think that maybe one of those viruses can be used to cure some other diseases via genetic modification.

    The pessimistic part of me wonders if this will be the start of a pandemic cycle that never ends until most people are dead.

    I want it to be the first one please.

    • SendMePhotos@lemmy.worldEnglish
      42·
      3 months ago

      The world could use the second one… I also want to live and I don’t want people to die but the earth could use less humans.

      • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.netEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        As we saw with the COVID pandemic, even in “1st world countries”, poorer people were disproportionately affected. Fewer humans won’t help when the majority of harm to the Earth is perpetuated by a small fraction who would be disproportionately represented in a world where the majority of people died.

        I sympathise with your sentiment, because it often does feel like humans are the problem, but the reality is that we’re not. Although it can feel weirdly comforting to think of humans as inherently and innately destructive, thinking this way is a pipeline to eco-fascism, which doesn’t offer productive ways forward.

        • SendMePhotos@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          This is non factual but I felt that most people who didn’t get a vaccine were rejecting it by choice.