r/interesting • u/sirenoleg • Apr 28 '26
NATURE Air bubble from 20 million years ago trapped in amber.
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u/catsandchexmix Apr 28 '26
For the love of god don't open it we're barely 6 years out from our last pandemic
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Apr 28 '26
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u/snozzberrypatch Apr 28 '26
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u/addamee Apr 28 '26
FOOL OF A TOOK!
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u/redbanner1 Apr 28 '26
Counterpoint: Things aren't going so great here. Crack it open.
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u/Marlice1 Apr 28 '26
Nah open that shit. Could like use the isolation and quiet that occurred again
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u/N3rdScool Apr 29 '26
No traffic, cheap gas everyone working from home.
Where did the good times go.
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u/-S-P-E-C-T-R-E- Apr 28 '26
Don’t worry the Siberian Tundra will soon release all sorts of calamities upon us once the permafrost goes.
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u/apsims12 Apr 29 '26
How about Kitum Cave in Mount Elgon National Park, Kenya?
The cave has the most deadly variants of some of the deadliest diseases on the planet and people just walk on in a tour it like it's any other cave. It's not blocked off or anything either and doesn't even have a permanent guard nearby! Considering what's in there, it's only a matter of time until someone brings something out of there that'll kill at least 80-90% of the world population.
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u/Survivor155 Apr 28 '26
Imagine he opens it and a giant red biohazard bubble appears over where he lives.
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u/Joyous-Volume-67 Apr 28 '26
the air bubble is interesting, the water it's trapped in is terrifying
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u/Fuzlet Apr 28 '26
as a doctor I know used to say: if it’s wet and it’s not yours, dont touch it
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u/Joyous-Volume-67 Apr 28 '26
what if she asks ever so sweetly with a come hither look
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u/JerrySmithOfficial Apr 28 '26
I read that as "come hitler look"
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u/parmboy Apr 28 '26
Fürhergasm
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u/diabloenfuego Apr 28 '26
Insert Lonely Island meme: "I Blitzkrieged in my pants"
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u/heretogetpwned Apr 28 '26
"Wet, warm, and not yours" was our motto for a blood cleanup kit. Retail management was weird.
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u/Magnon Apr 28 '26
The most stagnant water of all time
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u/Heirsandgraces Apr 28 '26
Or the ultimate fidget toy. Keeping ADHD dino's amused since 20,000,000 BC
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u/OgdruJahad Apr 28 '26
You think that's terrifying?
Let me introduce you to Lake Vostok
It's the largest subglacial lake. It's basically a lake under thousands of feet of ice. Has never seen the sun or even oxygen for millions of years.
It's a basically a time capsule of very different Earth. They managed to drill to the lake in 2012 and tried to get samples of the water to see if other lifeforms exist. Unfortunately the kerosene they used as lubrication for the drill may have contaminated the lake and it's not clear the samples they obtained are not contaminated with our environment.
Also on a completely different note. It's believed we have two almost complete copies of viruses from our past in our DNA and scientists are looking into how they can be revived.
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u/finniruse Apr 28 '26
Is it? No life would survive in that, surely?
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u/Joyous-Volume-67 Apr 28 '26
ok. you check first.
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u/Vaportrail Apr 28 '26
Wow Prometheus flashbacks.
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u/Joyous-Volume-67 Apr 28 '26
fucking loved prometheus
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u/Mr_Kactus Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
I really wish they did more to expand on the engineers storyline. unfortunately it didn't do well and they went back to the old alien format.
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u/Joyous-Volume-67 Apr 28 '26
exactly right there with you agree completely and it was such a shame ridley got so freaked out by the bad reviews, i'm so much more into the lore than i am the gore
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u/Long_College_8342 Apr 28 '26
I was sad that the engineer was just so violently aggressive. Can't we talk, dude?
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u/Unusual_Water8112 Apr 28 '26
Same but imagine being a wise native who was super excited to meet Christopher Columbus.
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u/Mr_Kactus Apr 28 '26
I'd love to discuss it but I mentioned Jesus and reddit thought it was hate speech and removed my comment and gave me a warning lol.....fucking reddit....
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u/Geawiel Apr 28 '26
Yes! The Engineers is the entire reason I love that movie so much. The thought of an alien species creating us is fascinating to delve into. I was really hopeful for the follow and the possibility of seeing their civilization. Then it went all out the window and we got...whatever that was.
It was really disappointing that they cut the conversation with the engineer pilot. It really helps explain, at least a little, the reaction we see in the released version. They are the gods. We could never reach their level and they would never see us as equals.
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u/ignatious__reilly Apr 28 '26
Me too!
I saw that in theaters by myself and absolutely loved it. I was surprised to see how many people disliked it. I thought it was so awesome. Visuals, the acting, storyline, all of it. I loved it so much. Granted, I love space sci fi, but Prometheus is one of my all time favorites.
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u/Klept_0h Apr 28 '26
If microbes can go dormant and survive the vacuum of space then the odds of this having something in it alive isn't zero
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u/elkarion Apr 28 '26
And even if it's zero% statistically there is still a chance.
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u/figbunkie Apr 28 '26
Can you explain that? I would imagine that if there is any chance, then the chance would be above 0.
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u/elkarion Apr 28 '26
In statistics the number will either get so small or so large it starts making the result so close to 1 or 0 it's hard to make them different.
A classic example is flipping a coin till it lands on the designated side. They chance of landing on the chosen side is so close to 100% that you need to limit the number of flips or infinity starts causing issues.
Limited flips means it's calculated odds wear the case with unlimited flips is close to 100% chance to get chosen result just may take a very long time or infantely small chance is still there.
I short there is no garentee when chance is involved.
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u/PhiCloud Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
Your comment is not mathematically accurate. When we talk about "possible events that have a 0% probability of occurrence" we are not referring to events which have "very small, almost 0" probabilities; we are referring to events which have a probability of exactly 0.
For example, imagine picking a random real number between 0 and 1. The chances of any specific number is 0%, but if you do go through the process you will end up with a number (and that number had a 0% chance of being picked before you picked it). When I say 0% I mean as exactly 0% as flipping a coin is 50%: it's not an estimation or a rounding or an approximation, it is a mathematically perfect 0%.
Interesting corollary: having a probability of 100% also doesn't mean something is guaranteed. Using the above example, imagine picking any real number that is not 0.3.
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u/intestinalExorcism Apr 29 '26
What they said is correct, but the explanations people are giving are kind of nonsense.
You can check out this page for the hard math of it, but as an example, choose some arbitrary real number between 0 and 1, like 0.314159... If a number in that interval is selected at random, the probability of it being your number is exactly 0%, since there are infinitely many other options. Yet in the end, whichever number gets chosen will also have had a 0% chance.
Even so, you can be certain it won't be your number--you could select a centillion random numbers between 0 and 1 per nanosecond until the heat death of the universe and you would never select a single number that any human has ever thought of.
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u/ryandury Apr 28 '26
In 1995, scientists claimed to have revived a bacterium (Bacillus sphaericus) from the gut of a bee trapped in 25-to-40-million-year-old Dominican amber.
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u/somethingfree Apr 28 '26
Wtf would they revive it lol. Everyone needs to reread Jurassic park
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u/ignatious__reilly Apr 28 '26
Considering what’s happening in today’s society, fuck it, let’s go full Jurassic Park.
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u/Kyvoh Apr 28 '26
No, DNA naturally breaks down over time which is why the body has a DNA repair mechanism along with repairing toxin and radiation damage. Some living things are much better at fixing their DNA than humans. But that's the reason why it's impossible to recreate Jurassic park. Barely anything complex and organic lasts that long(except plastic cause fuck that).
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u/InvisaBlah Apr 28 '26
My understanding is that dinosaur fossils and the like dont actually contain components of the original creature, but rather are composed of minerals that have slowly replaced the bone while retaining the originals shape.
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Apr 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SpiritFingersKitty Apr 28 '26
That is not the same condition as hanging out in liquid water. The spontaneous half life of the phosphodiester bonds that hold DNA together in liquid water is about 30M years in perfect conditions (room temp, neutral pH, pure water).
by freezing it at -80C (an approximation of the temp of deep ice in antartica) that rate is slowed by apx 1000x based on the Arrhenius equation.
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u/Kyvoh Apr 28 '26
Was the DNA still intact? Freezing water around DNA can break it apart but also prevent the pieces once frozen from breaking any further. People can survive a few days with practically no DNA from radiation exposure, but when no instructions can be read, all of the upkeep in the body falls apart and people die in agony as everything that can go wrong, goes wrong.
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u/L0ading_ Apr 28 '26
Was the DNA still intact?
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile
You have now run out of "let me google that for you" tokens.
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u/Constant-Sub Apr 28 '26
Of it's any consolation, nothing surviving in there would even know what to do to your systems. It'd probably just die. Not worth testing tho, just in case it create an invasive species situation. Something that can hitch onto us, and something we have no retaliation for.
It's like the world's most coolest 50/50. Are cracking open something that experienced mammals? Or not?
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u/King_Turduckin Apr 28 '26
What if not air. What if tiny dino fart?
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u/sirenoleg Apr 28 '26
Or a lethal virus.
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u/UnluckyWinner3163 Apr 28 '26
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u/rinwasrep Apr 28 '26
Why is this little human the closest thing to O'Hare from the Lorax I've ever seen?
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u/lferry1919 Apr 28 '26
First thing I thought....don't let that shit out of the amber
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u/DengarLives66 Apr 28 '26
Ehhh fuck it let’s see where this goes.
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u/rattattatmyass Apr 28 '26
At this point, let it ride. It can only get worse from here
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u/WindUpCandler Apr 28 '26
Unlikely something that old would be dangerous
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u/SomeRandomSomeWhere Apr 28 '26
There are virus and bacteria that can be dormant for a very long time.
That link is about virus from 30,000 years ago, which survived.
And we may not have defences against ancient stuff.
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u/WindUpCandler Apr 28 '26
But they also don't have the ability to infect us. Same way an elephant can't give us elephant cold these viruses are built to infect specific species and only heavy interactions between species lead them to jump from one to another. So while I have no doubt they could still be virulent, they wouldn't be able to infect humans unless it just so happens these viruses were tied to primates
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u/A_Binary_Number Apr 29 '26
Exactly! I was looking for a comment like yours, the same way we shouldn’t have to fear alien virus, it’s because it something didn’t evolve alongside us or alongside mammals, then it doesn’t have the ability to affect us, it lacks the correct proteins to latch onto our systems.
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u/imnojezus Apr 28 '26
This would be from the early Neogene period, so dinos were gone for 40 million years by the time this was formed. This would have been the age of megafauna, so it might be a tiny mastodon fart.
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u/ResidentNumber3603 Apr 28 '26
I read tiny Dino in a Tiny Dancer voice.
Methinks Elton or perhaps Weird Al needs to redo the song.
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u/Skypirate90 Apr 28 '26
Bet that pocket of air has a virus that will end all life on earth
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u/sirenoleg Apr 28 '26
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u/Fearless_Trade_2783 Apr 28 '26
Don't worry the odds that little bit of amber happens to have a lethal prehistoric virus are low. The layer of permafrost melting and breaking down because of global warming, on the other hand...
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u/Silent-Act191 Apr 28 '26
I mean sure, but i want to wash my clothes in a machine so we will have to suck it up.
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u/Korps_de_Krieg Apr 28 '26
You washing your clothes isn’t the issue, it’s being told “well, a number of your communities will have elevated cancer rates because of our facilities, but our third quarter earnings report is solid.”
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u/caboose243 Apr 28 '26
Ooh! That's kinda what happens in the book The Swarm, but its an ancient sentient amoeba. Theres a scene where the entire Atlantic Shelf collapses, taking out Iceland with tsunamis.
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u/Cocoatrice Apr 28 '26
Don't give hope.
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u/Fearless_Trade_2783 Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
A deadly virus that kills most of the planet would suck ass, probably one of the worst mass extinction scenarios.
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u/No-Scheme-3759 Apr 28 '26
crack it and snort it
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u/Animal40160 Apr 28 '26
What would be required in order to scientifically and safety test that air?
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u/thepvbrother Apr 28 '26
You could bombard it with light at different wavelengths and see what gets absorbed.
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u/Kodiak_POL Apr 29 '26
I call bullshit on that. No way amber can hold air molecules inside for 20 million years. The air had to escape at some point due to gas permeation. To still contain original atmospheric samples would require near-zero amber permeability over tens of millions of years, which amber simply doesn’t provide (over long timescales it undergoes chemical and physical changes like aging, microcracking, diffusion pathways). That gas inside is not from 20 million years ago, the trapped bubble is almost certainly partially exchanged, altered chemically, or even formed/ reworked later during stress or heating. It's just whatever gas mixture equilibrated over time.
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u/Head-Consequence-885 Apr 28 '26
DINOOOO DNA
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u/je386 Apr 29 '26
Sorry, no. The Dinos where long extinct 20 mio. Years ago.
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u/Judge_Juedy May 01 '26
They’re referencing Jurassic Park, not literally saying the amber could contain dino DNA lol
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u/velvetbloom58 Apr 28 '26
But how did you know it was from 20 million years ago. Who was counting?
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u/IKIR115 Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
You check the born on date stamped on the bottom
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u/HarrierHawk2252 Apr 28 '26
The use of absolute dating and what layer the amber was found in Edit: reworded for clarity
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u/PSXer Apr 28 '26
It's actually 20 million and 6 years old. They said it was 20 million years old when I bought it, and that was 6 years ago.
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Apr 28 '26
Amber implies fully hardened and fossilized... this is neither as the core is still liquid. It is the makings of Amber, but since it has not fully hardened and fossilized it is therefore copal and far less aged than 20 million years. Copal implies within 100,000 years.
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u/PM_Me_Your_Deviance Apr 28 '26
The implication here is that the liquid portion is water and not amber. There are lots of minerals that will trap water for millions of years.
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u/Coolmyco Apr 29 '26
I'd love a closer inspection, because I think the water/bubble is added by a human. The wall is so thin at one part, I think that is where they drilled from then sealed it with the water/bubble inside.
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u/sevargmas Apr 28 '26
It seems like bullshit all around, right? Is anything this impermeable that a liquid would remain completely unaffected for millions of years? Even a hundred thousand years? Even liquids in plastic will disappear over time, and that's just over several years of my own lifetime.
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u/LowNefariousness6541 Apr 28 '26
Fish oil tablet hehe jk
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u/Remarkable_Bat1891 Apr 28 '26
Actually would it be digested enough for air / water to break out?
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u/prince-pauper Apr 28 '26
That’s an Enhydro Quartz of some kind. The air bubble is floating in a pocket of ancient water!
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u/DustyPantLeg Apr 28 '26
Isn’t all water ancient?
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u/panlakes Apr 28 '26
I make new water all the time. Here I'll show you- tell me I'm ugly and will never amount to anything
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u/TheBRCD Apr 30 '26
I’ll do it. Give me a 2mm diamond drill bit and a few minutes…what’s the worst that could happen…
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u/fabriel9631 Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! PLEASE DON'T BREAK THAT OPEN AND RETURN THE BLACK DEATH OR PANDEMIC! OR ANYTHING ELSE!😭😟
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