This is how a lot of dystopian, near end of the world movies start. A scientist or archeologist finds some really old thing and they mess around with it too much and unleash a plague on the planet. I think we could all do with not having another plague right now.
I'm sure it's all fine and that when they say "life" they mean micro organisms but at the same time, I will admit I worry a little bit whenever we start talking about messing around with things like this. If something is moving inside of a rock that is dated to be millions of years old, the cautious person in me says that it might not be a terrible idea to just leave it alone.
It's probably nothing to get worked up about but I think that people are a lot more fearful of mucking about with things we don't understand yet, even and probably especially if it is microscopic.
The stone was first discovered in Australia but now resides in a university in West Virginia and a scientist named Kathy Benison and her team plan to crack the stone open and research the "life" that she says could still be surviving, somehow, in a stone that is more than 800 million years old.
Concerns have been raised in the scientific community because the entire world is a bit on edge about microorganisms at the moment and one scientist had this to say.
"An environmental organism that has never seen a human is not going to have the mechanism to get inside of us and cause disease,"
Isn't that what we have arrogantly said about a lot of stuff? Isn't that what all of these secure research facilities always say about how there's nothing to worry about because we have the tools to contain it? They always say this right up to the point where they no longer DO have the ability to contain it and maybe I am being a bit paranoid but I would prefer that they just leave this friggin rock alone.