Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share To Be Alive or Not Alive, that is the Question.
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
To Be Alive or Not Alive, that is the Question.
Deep in the ink-black ocean off Japan… scientists hauled glowing plankton from the abyss… and found something that shouldn’t exist.
A microscopic shadow with the smallest genome ever discovered — just 189 genes.
Only for copying itself.
No energy. No food. No walls. It steals everything from its host.
Is it alive… or something darker, evolving on the razor edge between cell and virus?
This discovery doesn’t just shrink the record books — it shatters what we thought life even was.
Strange Bites Episode 11: ‘To be alive or not alive, that is the question.’
The ocean’s darkest secret is calling
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.02.651781v1.full
https://www.science.org/content/article/microbe-bizarrely-tiny-genome-may-be-evolving-virus
https://astrobiology.com/2025/05/candidatus-sukunaarchaeum-mirabile-is-a-novel-archaeon-with-an-unprecedentedly-small-genome.html
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a69728751/archaea-cell-virus-life/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukunaarchaeum
Music from #Uppbeat
https://uppbeat.io/t/all-ambient/dark-skies-fading
License code: GAOVQHDA1UEDR9XG
View all episodes
By Lance MartinDeep in the ink-black ocean off Japan… scientists hauled glowing plankton from the abyss… and found something that shouldn’t exist.
A microscopic shadow with the smallest genome ever discovered — just 189 genes.
Only for copying itself.
No energy. No food. No walls. It steals everything from its host.
Is it alive… or something darker, evolving on the razor edge between cell and virus?
This discovery doesn’t just shrink the record books — it shatters what we thought life even was.
Strange Bites Episode 11: ‘To be alive or not alive, that is the question.’
The ocean’s darkest secret is calling
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.02.651781v1.full
https://www.science.org/content/article/microbe-bizarrely-tiny-genome-may-be-evolving-virus
https://astrobiology.com/2025/05/candidatus-sukunaarchaeum-mirabile-is-a-novel-archaeon-with-an-unprecedentedly-small-genome.html
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a69728751/archaea-cell-virus-life/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukunaarchaeum
Music from #Uppbeat
https://uppbeat.io/t/all-ambient/dark-skies-fading
License code: GAOVQHDA1UEDR9XG