Life - but not as we know it...

Bill Sikes · Post by **Bill Sikes** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 4:22 am

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... ortal.html

The creature, first discovered in a small industrial cooling tower on the outskirts of the city, could qualify for a new "domain" in the tree of life - where a domain is a bigger category than a kingdom or a phylum.

The "giant virus", dubbed the Mimivirus, or "mimicking microbe", because it was first mistaken for a bacterium, inhabits amoebae and is more than twice as big as any other virus so far found. At about half a millionth of a metre across - around the size of a small bacterium - it is one of the few that can be seen under a light microscope.

If you access the Telegraph's article, you will see that the picture looks like

a big hairy smiling face! (200,000 times' magnification).

Suresh Gupta · Post by **Suresh Gupta** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 5:49 am

Bill Sikes wrote: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... ortal.html

If you access the Telegraph's article, you will see that the picture looks like

a big hairy smiling face! (200,000 times' magnification).

I have read the telegraph article. I have no proper credentials to comment on the finding. I agree with you that it may be a life which modern man is not aware of.

Tombstone · Post by **Tombstone** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 10:22 am

Bill,

Thanks for this fascinating article! I'm curious to see how the scientific community will end up classifying it. If this virus does end up qualifying as a fourth domain - it would be revolutionary.

Makes you wonder of all the things we still haven't discovered.