Conform or be cast out.

Purelle laughs at your germs. Laughs from its mountain.

Lysol laughs from its cloud

Thanks for linking the LAST PAGE OF THE ARTICLE SUBBY.
I hate you for that. Douche.

Um, yea.

Quick, get the space meat!.

If got a better than a D in biology I might panic. or care. or even understand.

or care.

MrBallou: To pick nits: cell divide, not subdivide; the bugs are in FLUID (not "crystal") inclusions; they are bacteria, not viruses. He only mentioned viruses as a reason you wouldn't want to divide.

TFA talks about immortality, but these things are only very, very old. 50 million years doesn't seem like much, especially first thing in the morning. The pain in my joints! Oy vey, you don't know from old.

Also, one of the leading theories on why we age is that we cannot sustain cell division indefinitely. But if the cell never has to divide there would be very little from stopping it from living for a long time.

Bacteria that divide once every thousand years do not scare me. I will die of old age long before the infection gets very bad.

StrangeQ: But if the cell never has to divide there would be very little from stopping it from living for a long time.

But who calls that livin'
If no gal will give in
To no cell that is 100,000 years?

extremophiles? Sounds like an androgynous tentacle loving dick girl category.

2xhelix: Meh, bacteria and viruses are child's play. Prions put them both to shame.

Prions scare the shiat out of me. And among Prion diseases, Chronic Wasting Disease scares the shiat out of me.

you have pee hands: Bacteria that divide once every thousand years do not scare me. I will die of old age long before the infection gets very bad.

This.

TFA: In 2010 bacteria from cliffs in the village of Beer in Devon were found to have lasted 553 days on the exterior of the International Space Station.

All right Farkers, all together now:

Beer: Is there anything it can't do?

Saiga410: you have pee hands: Bacteria that divide once every thousand years do not scare me. I will die of old age long before the infection gets very bad.

This.

Sure, if it was only cell division or quantity that makes you sick... and not other factors, like your body's inflammatory response to the organism or toxic substances produced by the organism...

/pleasant dreams

docmattic: Sure, if it was only cell division or quantity that makes you sick... and not other factors, like your body's inflammatory response to the organism or toxic substances produced by the organism...

Dude, for the amount of microbes in a microscopic crystal inclusion they could convert their entire biomass to hydrogen cyanide and your body would be fine.

dragonchild: docmattic: Sure, if it was only cell division or quantity that makes you sick... and not other factors, like your body's inflammatory response to the organism or toxic substances produced by the organism...

Dude, for the amount of microbes in a microscopic crystal inclusion they could convert their entire biomass to hydrogen cyanide and your body would be fine.

Lethal doses of some neurotoxins for primates are in the range of several nanograms.

docmattic: Lethal doses of some neurotoxins for primates are in the range of several nanograms.

That's the problem with amateurs. . . no sense of scale. Now, being an amateur is OK, but only if you're learning, which requires some humility. Acting like a smartass when you're obviously out of your league is not only obvious, it should be embarrassing.

These colonies weigh in the femtogram range. A nanogram of mass to them is like a skyscraper to you. What you're imagining is analogous to a small pack of humans creating a skyscraper's weight worth of shiat if you keep them trapped in a small room and never feed them. The only living creature known that keeps increasing in weight from nothing is your mom.

The entire inclusion weighs much less than a single nanogram. Like I said, but even taken several steps further, even if the bacteria somehow magically transformed their entire biomass (WTF) into the most toxic substance on Earth to humans (WTF) and that was directly injected into your blood (WTF) -- so we're already three full WTFs into fantasyland -- it would have no effect, as that mass would be orders of magnitude away from LD50.

dragonchild: The only living creature known that keeps increasing in weight from nothing is your mom.

Hey - leave my mother out of this, and I'll leave this out of your mother

/got nuthin' else. Admittedly I didn't consider weight of individual bacteria relative to nanograms, just went with "nanograms = really small"
//still wouldn't volunteer to be exposed to these bacteria, juuuuuust in case.