back to article 'Alien' lifeform wakened from 120,000 year Arctic slumber

American scientists, showing the reckless disregard for the warnings implicit in quality science fiction that is so regrettably common in the boffinry community, have revived an ancient lifeform which has been slumbering beneath the Arctic ice pack for 120,000 years. To add insult to injury, the scientists believe that their …

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  1. Andrew Johnson 3
    Alert

    May I be the first...

    to welcome our purplish-brown, blobby overlords.

  2. Anonymous John

    Well, someone has to.

    I for one welcome our new indestructible prehistoric overlord.

  3. Ian Ferguson
    Alien

    More importantly

    Can it shape-shift?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT7AH4JyuNs

  4. neb
    Go

    let me be the first...

    ...to welcome our purplish-brown, blobby overlords

    oh please oh please oh please let me be the first, or i'll cwy =(

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    E coli isn't deadly

    "Loveland-Curtze assures us that H Glacei isn't a deadly pathogen like E Coli, however."

    E coli isn't deadly, either, for the most part. Unless you're talking about one or two specific strains. So there!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I seem to remember....

    ...that's how the Cybermen got revived back in Troughton days.

  7. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: let me be the first...

    Andrew Johnson 3 beat you to that wholly unoriginal post.

    Still, hey, at least you're the first neb, not the third.

  8. jai

    take off...

    ...and nuke the site from orbit! it's the only way to be sure

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    ha ha

    nice story!

  10. jai

    and yet...

    ...across the gulfs of space, microbes superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us.....

  11. Tanuki
    Thumb Down

    Paging John Carpenter....

    No doubt Hollywood movie-moguls are lining up to secure the rights to this - I can hardly wait. A low-rent John-Carpenter-style B-movie in which the 'evil resurrected aliens' are actually about as threatening as a bag of melted Gummi-bears.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Who do these scientists think they are...

    ....meddling with forces they cannot possibly comprehend? I demand some kind of oversight.Perhaps the religious community could be of some help here? After all, they are moral people with a grasp on science. I suggest some of those creationist types, with their knowledge of the earths origins, their assistance would be very welcome by the scientists im sure.

    Just dont let them create blobby super-dinosaurs and put them in a fucking theme park or something. AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NO JEFF GOLDBLUM AND HIS FUCKING CHAOS THEORIES!

    AC...I dont want their blobby assassins coming to exterminate me with..err..goo or whatever.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Hey, I've got an idea

    Let's invent a new joke sometimes instead of auto-parroting the dreariest television catchphrases. Wouldn't that be fun? (Score: -5, Disconcerting)

  14. Fizzl
    Alien

    I hope we have...

    ... Kurt Russell and Keith David on standby with a Flame-thrower or two.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Overlords, etc.

    I suspect SB aimed for "o" on the keyboard, and someone managed to hit "e" -

    "Neb" is commonly known as a nose; so perhaps more appropriate verbiage would be "beaten by a neb" ? The beauty of this is, it works equally well with a nob.

  16. dan russell
    Thumb Up

    @Ian Ferguson

    Thanks for the reminder of that brilliant and pretty damn scary film...

  17. thefutureboy

    All your...

    ...teeny-weeny base are belong to us.

  18. Darren 4

    Possible film franchise for Mr Carpenter... OH!

    totally unrelated to the title, I'll order my chest bursting alien now then... Or will this be The Blob all over again ;/

  19. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Pirate

    Welcome

    to the zombie apocalypse when it escapes from the lab

    <<<arming up with M16s, shotguns and molotovs

  20. minusen

    Re: take off...

    Noooo! Haven't you seen The Andromeda Strain?

    Nukeing it will only spread it faster!

  21. SmallYellowFuzzyDuck, how pweety!
    Coat

    May I be the first to

    Welcome our "Let me be the first" spotting Domimatrix Overlady moderator to this Alien lifeform article comments section.

  22. Random Noise

    Viral

    Perhaps this is actually a cunning Viral (badum tish) marketing campaign for the soon to be remade version of 'The Thing'.

    Let face it it's never going to be as good as Carpenters version so they have to hype it plenty to get bums on seats.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Am I the only one..

    thinking of the old sci-fi series where this blood virus life form starts taking over the human race? Anyone remember what it was called?

  24. Charles King

    To do this properly...

    they should have revived it in a lab appropriately placed somewhere on the ice cap, then sent back a message saying, "...another lab tech has come down with this mysterious illness, and Dr Jones is complaining of headaches and acting strangely..." before cutting off all radio contact.

    Of course, there is the chance that plans to surprise the troops when they arrive and have a good laugh might go horribly wrong...

  25. Tony S

    @jai

    "....nuke the site from orbit!

    Ah, but if you refer to the film "Evolution", you'll know that this is how they propagate - the more heat, the bigger, the more purplish brown and the blobbier they get.

    But the good thing is that we just need to get in a few crates of Head & Shoulders... (although to be a nit picker, the chemistry behind the explanation in the film was a tad inconsistent.)

  26. Jamie 19
    Linux

    They are not microbes

    They are nanites.

    First they will take over our machinery, then all technology, at which point they will win as we have no other way to defend ourselves against something we cannot see.

    Run to the hills, hide in places where there is no technology.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    Hahaha

    An Ed-Tard whining about unoriginal stories?

    Oh the irony is so sweet....

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    title

    I'll get my nanosuit...

  29. deshepherd

    @Paging John Carpenter....

    No need to do this ... in "the blob" (at least 1958 original) a large blobby organism terrorises a small town before its discovered that the only way to control it is to freeze it which they do with C02 fire extinguishers before the USAF safely dispose of it in, ahem, the Arctic.

    Thus I suspect that this blobby lifeform revived from its frozen state in the arctic may well be much less than 100,000 years old :-)

  30. keith9600

    retired engineer

    This article had stated:

    "In summary, then, we're looking at an ancient lifeform - albeit tiny - recently wakened by meddling scientists from its hundred-thousand-year sleep beneath the polar icecap."

    Here factual reporting stops and unfounded assumption takes over:

    "It's capable of surviving, perhaps, in the most hostile alien interplanetary environments known to man."

    This is unproven ~ a conclusion not warranted by anything the laboratory has done to date. According to your own report, all it's survived is a very cold environment. Please don't extrapolate by inserting your own wild imaginings.

    "It can evade mankind's toughest lab sterilisation precautions."

    That is simply not known. Considering what the report says, all it has survived to date is a very long stay in a very cold environment. Claiming it can survive "...mankind's toughest lab sterilisation precautions" is alarmist and far from any demonstrated truth.

    I'd appreciate fewer reporters' unfounded opinions and more facts in scientific reports. Perhaps you need a few more "perhaps" qualifiiers.

  31. rpjs

    Reminds me of a quote, oh yes:

    "That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die."

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    "....nuke the site from orbit!" is from Alien 2

    right? I am 90% sure for Alien and definitely 100% sure that it was NOT evolution

    but anyway let's see what the community think..

  33. Alex Cooper
    Go

    Oh good God no.......

    "The purplish-brown, blobby entity was "coaxed back to life"

    It's not Mr Blobby is it?? Thought we got rid of that thing ages ago, it's too horrible to even contemplate!

  34. Mark Duncan

    Hmm

    PROBABILITY THAT ONE OR MORE TEAM MEMBERS MAY BE INFECTED BY INTRUDER ORGANISM:

    - 75%

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Unoriginal?

    Unoriginal, maybe. But the "may I be the first to welcome..." posts are a nice tradition on the Register, a catch phrase if you like. It's something that everyone understands.

    As for RetiredEngineer, I believe most of us have been reading the Reg. long enough and have sufficient intellect and command of English to understand changes in context and the house style.

    If I want news, outspoken comment and amusement (and the moderatrix) I check the Reg. out at lunchtime. If I want rigorously checked scientific technical papers then there are plenty of really boring publications you can turn to. "Camshaft Spotters Monthly" perhaps?

  36. Luther Blissett

    A name by any other Rose

    Dr Jennifer Loveland-Curtze I recognize as a sexologist from a Pynchon novel. Herminiimonas glacie I cannot compute - anyone have an xlation?

  37. Sean Timarco Baggaley
    Stop

    @keith9600

    "Please don't extrapolate by inserting your own wild imaginings."

    You're new here, aren't you?

  38. Rod MacLean
    Thumb Up

    RE: Oh good God no

    Alex Cooper wrote: "It's not Mr Blobby is it?? Thought we got rid of that thing ages ago, it's too horrible to even contemplate!"

    I think it's a fertile spore from the main blobby conglomerate.

    What we have to worry about next will be the thousands of mini-blobbies breaking away from their lives of petri-dish drudgery and restarting the plan to take over Saturday night television...

    I'd actually pay to watch Davina and Ant and Dec being beaten to a pulpy mess by a thousand Mr Blobbys.

  39. Simon Barrett
    Joke

    Can I just point out...

    That any scientist called Dr. Jenny Loveland-Curtz, while likely to be beautiful and brilliant, will not be able to defeat the earth-threatening blob on her own but will need some kind of low-brow, no-respect-for-authority loose cannon to get the job done.

    On the upside, she'll probably survive and will get a new boyfriend out of it.

  40. Simon Ball

    @AC

    "Nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" was from Aliens (they declined to name it Alien 2).

    An extraterrestrial pathogen which had its growth radically accelerated by heat was from Evolution.

    The link between nukes and extraterrestrial pathogens was The Andromeda Strain, werein the laboratory where the pathogen was studied was equipped with a thermonuclear failsafe, to sterilise the faciltity (and most of the surrounding area) in the event of a containment breach.

  41. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    not quite.

    "It can evade mankind's toughest lab sterilisation precautions."

    It can apparently pass through bog-standard sterilisation filters. I doubt that it survives autoclaving, which is the standard labware sterilisation procedure. Nuking the site from orbit is probably unnecessary.

    And what Huw 3 said about E.coli.

  42. Seanmon
    Thumb Up

    @commentards

    Top commenting boys and girls, needed a good laugh today.

  43. Sordid Details
    Coat

    Overlords?

    Take me to your agar.

  44. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I can't believe my alma mater is going to be responsible for the destruction of the world!

    Oh the humanity!

    Well, actually having dealt with all to many of the gits there, actually I can. But it's still embarrassing.

    One other small request: the acceptable alternate monikers are Penn State or PSU. Penn Uni comes a bit to close to The University of Pennsylvania. They would be the high falutin' Ivy Leagures, and it is quite insulting to be associated with them.

    Where's the head in a bag icon? I am so ashamed.

  45. Tawakalna
    Alert

    but nukes won't work...

    ..against shoggoths and Great Old Ones.

    "there is life eternal within the eater of souls...."

    Cthulhu ph'tag'n (akshly it's Yog-Sothoth but do you really care?)

    we're doomed.

  46. neb
    Heart

    Re: Re: let me be the first... By Sarah Bee

    i don't care anymore, i was noticed by Sarah Bee =)

    i'm now gonna go have a lie down as all this excitement is too much for me

    now what was the name of the priapic convicts brief, i think i might have a new case...

  47. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    bags of mostly water

    "May I be the first...

    By Andrew Johnson 3 Posted Monday 15th June 2009 09:57 GMT

    to welcome our purplish-brown, blobby overlords.

    "

    of course you "bags of mostly water" forget the purplish-brown, blobby overlords were here long before you were, so its for them to welcome us after they fully awake and start useing our bags of warm water and salts as their breeding grounds anew....

    did you people not see the premise of the very first "Regenesis" before they lost the plot and moved into mundain story telling.....

  48. AndrewG
    Unhappy

    Just to be perfectly clear

    We have made sure that the ultra small microorganism isn't a bunch of deadly alien nanomachines programmed to convert the entire planet to grey goo havn't we?

    no?

    I was afraid of that!

  49. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh great...

    So it's either 'The Thing' or Tom Baker's Doctor bowel-looseningly scary Krynoid.

  50. Nebulo
    Joke

    Nothing to worry about.

    After all, we know that (by the laws of prehistoric Science Fiction writing software)

    ... it will catch the common cold and die, or

    ... it will be killed by a band of peasants with torches, or

    ... a cute kid will talk to it of God and it will die, or

    ...

  51. peter 3
    Paris Hilton

    Mistakes are part of learning

    Have they tried feeding it chocolate or shining a laser onto it maybe

    bathing it in radiation or playing popular 80's hits on oversized loud speakers.

    If they don't have a microwave right next to the petri dish or leaking containers of

    DNA lying around then nothing will happen!

  52. TeeCee Gold badge

    Meh!

    120,000 years? So in length of time life's been around terms it's been taking a bit of a siesta then. About the only danger here is that of it getting a tad pissed off at being woken up early and throwing a hissy fit.

    Put it this way. If it was deadly to human life, there wouldn't be any human life around these days for it to be deadly to.

    Now, where's my cloned T-Rex you bastards?

  53. Tom 106

    Alien life form found the Artic

    Hasn't Dan Brown already explored something similar to this in his novel "Deception Point"?

  54. Barney Carroll
    Go

    @rpgs

    I know! Get these kids, with their 'films' and 'nukes'! At the Mountains of Madness, anybody?

    Best find/article/comments combo in ages. Loving it.

  55. Matt Martin

    The End

    The End

    ?

  56. Graham Bartlett

    Obligatory quote

    Just so long as there's someone on hand to say "You gotta be f***ing kidding" when it grows legs and runs away.

  57. Marvin the Martian
    Boffin

    "It's not some huge blobomination"?

    How does that help us, saying that it's not some huge alien they're working on? All aliens are small at some point right, it just needs time to grow to unmissable size and *then* start rampaging.

  58. Bartelby-wasPiLS

    Tiny but deadly...

    If I remember well, The Thing (the Carpenter's one at least) is also tiny, tiny, tiny... roughly the size of a mammalian cell, which admittedly makes it a couple hundred times larger than /this/ particular alien, but it might have been a monitor resolution problem... after all, if we switch from Blair's console to HDTV, we might notice that the entities he was "observing" are actually aggregates of hundreds of these tiny purple-ish things...

  59. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    respect to blobby things

    let us not forget that the last famous blobby thing, blue-green algea to be precise, invented SEX.

    I look forward to whatever new delights the now empurpled revisitor has to offer.

    Lovely article, steeped in the revered house style.

    @ Mr Retireded_Engineer, yes these people are making things up and drawing false inferences, deliberately.

  60. J 3
    Alien

    Ancient?

    I still have to read the original research, but going by the Reg article only this "ancient" qualifier is a bit weird here... 120,000 years is nothing in bacterial terms, so while it would be really cool (ahem), it is really mostly a modern organism. Now, a 3 billion year old bacterium brought back to life, not THAT would be something crazy and alien.

  61. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's time to take this place right down to the ice

    I'll be down in the generator room planting the TNT!

  62. Grease Monkey Silver badge

    Loveland-Curtze?

    For a short bus delicious dyslexic moment I read her name as Lovecraft-Curtze.

  63. Fozzy 1
    Alien

    first rule of a sci-fi movie

    Well if the sci-fi movies have taught me anything, I'll be making sure I stand behind Bill Paxton. That guy just keeps on sacrificing himself to make sure everyone else has a chance to get away.

  64. matt carey
    Black Helicopters

    @jai

    best comment on here by far!

  65. Mark York 3 Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    I seem to remember....

    " ...that's how the Cybermen got revived back in Troughton days."

    The Cybermen deliberately froze themselves & awoken by explorers on Telos, your thinking of the Ice Warriors (Martians), I'm also thinking Fourth Doctor's Krynoids.

    Paris because she's thawed out a few things.

  66. Kristin McKechie
    Joke

    Typical..

    ...nurse Lovelace gets sued for bringing a purplish, blobby entity to life (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/15/nurse_lovelace/) while Doctor Loveland-Curtze will probably get a Nobel prize...

    Just goes to show that the Doctors take all the credit while the Nurses do all the real work..

    *disclaimer: I'm married to a nurse*

  67. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
    Alien

    Who Plans against Us/for Us? ......Real Aliens or Virtual Idiots

    ""Please don't extrapolate by inserting your own wild imaginings."

    You're new here, aren't you?" .... By Sean Timarco Baggaley Posted Monday 15th June 2009 12:35 GMT

    :-) Classic, Sean. It just goes to show that not everyone realises that Life is an extrapolation of wild imaginings. And whose wild imaginings are you following today? Who rules your life?

    Lewis,

    When are you going to expose these sad and mad jokers ..... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/15/cabinet_office_cybersec_agency/ ...... as nothing other than gravy trainers who would have no idea of the skillsets required to Run and Foster CyberIntelAIgent Security Missions.

    Seems like this earlier question to you has been answered with a very clear ...... we haven't a fcuking clue about what we should be doing.

    "Lewis,

    You are supposed to have your ear to the ground in military circles, so who has Lead Responsibility, in UK Special Forces, for CyberSpace Command and Control Configuration.

    Or is that something to be supplied to the MOD from a Private Contractor and/or Mercenary Pirate ……….. to Gift them a Remote Civil Power which extraordinarily renders Media and Government, their Puppets. And in that case, who would be the Decisive Procurement Officer/Head Honcho/Chief Hoover?" ..... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/03/royal_navy_vs_ufos/comments/

    Seems like a good time to Offer them some valuable instruction although that is maybe always best provided in CyberSpace Field as a Virile and Viral Red Team Magic Hat Penetrations BetaTest/Live AIdDestruction Testing to Expose the Systemic Vulnerabilities in Establishment Systems ....... because that are too slow and stupid and outdated/cumbersome and pathetically unwieldy, to quickly understand anything else ....... and they have no one at point, easily contacted and knowledgeable, to take and deflect Live Fire.

    The old way of playing the Great Game whereby you just simply ignored the Public and did your own thing behind closed doors and expected the News/Media to carry and promote dodgy plans, just because you were screwing the System and Laundering Public Money, a la G20 Summit and Cabinet Style, is long gone. The Puppet Show is Over ...... and there is a New Game in Town ...... which is shared here to discover the Present State of British Intelligence and Counter CyberIntelAIgents across Any and All Departments which one would reasonably expected to be at ITs Leading Cutting Edge. The Evidence would seem to suggest a Pitifully Poor at best, and at worst, a non existent Facility, for which they should hang their heads in Shame for are they not to Blame? Although they could always argue to Escape Accountability and Responsibility, as Sad and Sorry Wasters always do, that as Minnows they would and will never be able to do SharksWorks, and who could disagree with that.

    This is where IT is at ....in the CyberSpace Security Game? .....

    "Alex,

    One could easily Create with AI, a Civil CyberSpace Project for Computer Program Led Beings and CyberIntelAIgently Designed Entities, which would XXXXorcise and Exercise the Global Intelligence Agencies and Tempt them into the Realities of Virtual Reality XXXXistentialism.

    AI Facilition for Global Operating Devices ...... with QuITe GOD-like Control of Power and therefore in Direct Control of ITs Distribution.

    Which would take AIMMORPGPlay right to the Hearts and Minds of the Legacy Incumbent Establishment and would Invite them to Invest Quantitatively Eased Funds with Driving Sourcerors.

    Thus will they be rightly entitled to be appraised of what Fate has in Store when Destiny Plays the Always Winning Hand. Which as a Right Royal Flush is Incredibly Hard to Beat without Cheating, and then is All Lost and Everything Subject to Forfeit/Credit Transfer/Worthy Ruin.

    Those Stakes though should not So Paralyze them with their Own Fears that they would not wish to Play in the Virtual Realms of CyberSpace, for One cannot avoid the Reality of that which is Virtually Presented as being Already Technically There ....... and XXXXStreamly HyperRadioProActive

    Which would Enter Hide&Seekers into EnigmatIQ Vorsprung durch AITechnik MasterClasses in NEUKlearer Energy and Virtual Astra Meta PhysICQs.

    http://sandpit.hideandseekfest.co.uk/2009/01/14/state-of-the-sandpit/ " ....... which would have been also a valid message for Alex Allen's inbox too but it aint working/receiving mail anymore, which always tells one exactly what one needs to know about the competition and opposition ....... and tells everyone else that it may not even exist, which adds further vulnerability pressures to a Struggling Administration Modelled on Evaporating Spin.

  68. crypt
    Joke

    Strange Aeons.

    please tell me -

    - that they didnt find the little shoggoth in a partially collapsed tomb with fish-lizard carvings on walls at weird non-euclidean angles......

  69. Trevor 3
    Coat

    hmm

    Step 1....Collect organism

    Step 2................................

    Step 3....Welcoming blobby overlords

  70. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    These people

    Regarding this article's closing statement, I must say that the finding may on the contrary be a warning, that Mars may not be death afterall, but that if there is life, it may post a serious biological threat to humanity, as this awaken lifeform does.

    On the same token, it is also a warning of how the melting of polar ice can also release this kind of organisms apart from our natural environments for hundreds of thousands of years, to be suddenly in contact with our ocean's foodchains reaching up to humans. This one was found and is kept under control laboratory conditions, but the melting scenario is a uncontroled condition of potential biohazard then. One of the theories regarding the disapearance of dinasours has to do with a widely spread disease. There is much ti study and be careful about this finding/warning.

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