What lies beneath… permafrost
| Photo Credit:
Adrian Wojcik
What is ‘death’? Is it just the freezing of ‘life’ chemicals into seemingly eternal immobility, but which can be warmed back to life? What is ‘life’ indeed? Is it something that can be shelved — and de-shelved? These questions — and more — swirl around in the liminal space between science and philosophy.
We are used to believing that death is a permanent state, but that comes into question when you learn that some scientists, acting on a crazy idea, brought back to life microbes that were trapped in deep ice for 40,000 years.
Inconceivable as his idea may have seemed initially — waking microbes that had been “dead” for forty millennia — Tristan Caro, a postdoctoral research associate in geobiology at Caltech, did succeed in convincing his colleagues to embark on this ‘mission impossible’.
They dug deep into permafrost for the microbes and placed them in heavy water (containing a heavier isotope of hydrogen). Six months on, their patience… and faith… paid off — the microbes came alive and built a flourishing colony.
“These are not dead samples by any means,” says Caro, in a statement issued by the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he earlier graduated in geological sciences. “They’re still very much capable of hosting robust life that can break down organic matter and release it as carbon dioxide.”
Caro has just scratched the surface — literally. “There’s so much permafrost in the world — in Alaska, Siberia and in other northern cold regions,” he says. “We’ve only sampled one tiny slice of that.” There is also a hidden warning to the world. These zombies, woken up by a warming world, might wreak havoc on the environment, accentuating climate change.
More Like This
Published on October 20, 2025
