DailyDirt: To Seek Out New Life...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The Earth's biosphere has some incredible diversity, and biologists have hardly even begun to scratch the surface. There used to be just the Plant and Animal Kingdoms, and then there were as many as six "kingdoms of life" -- but recent discoveries have made the classification of eukaryotes a bit messy for biologists to agree upon. Here are some examples of a couple of strange species and an ambitious project to create a virtual biosphere that could become as intricate as the one we live in. By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.
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Filed Under: biosphere, caffeine, fungus, grandroids, life, steve grand


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  1. identicon
    Pixelation, 21 Jun 2011 @ 6:42pm

    "It looks like biologists need more formal naming conventions."

    How truly boring.

    Keep up the great new names, I say!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Jun 2011 @ 6:51pm

    Looks like scientists have found the Iowa Unix Convention.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 21 Jun 2011 @ 7:12pm

    Caffeine Bacteria

    No, I’m fine, not jittery at all, really. I don’t need to sleep, because in 20 minutes I’ll be dividing into new offspring.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    Michael Ho (profile), 21 Jun 2011 @ 8:16pm

    Re:

    I suppose physicists name their particles with silly names, so biologists can name things after cartoon characters if they want. There's already a protein named after Sonic the Hedgehog: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_hedgehog

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 21 Jun 2011 @ 9:42pm

    Re: Naming

    Particle physicists already had “charm” and “strangeness”. And of course “quark” from James Joyce.

    The astronomers seem to be the sticks-in-the-mud, vetoing “Xena” and calling it “Eris” instead.

    Though given the discord the demotion of Pluto has caused, maybe the name “Eris” was appropriate after all...

    link to this | view in thread ]


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