The scientist they interview, Jean-Michel Claverie, has done a lot of work in the large DNA-virus world, along with Didier Raoult. One of his best papers IMO (http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/gb-2006-7-6-110) goes into some theories about viruses. Basically, these nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDVs) look quite a lot like a nucelus in their infected amoeba targets. On some level, going back, who's to say that the nucleus wasn't just some big, DNA virus that stuck around? The parallel to the mitochondria/chloroplast theory is kind of neat to boot. Definitely worth a read.

Well this is a potential side-effect of global climate change/warming that I had never considered... And I don't know this for sure, but off the cuff, I'm betting neither have 7,999,999,000 or so of the 8 billion people on the planet.

And I'm not talking about the Godzilla-esque viruses, but the possibly dormant but not dead strains of smallpox, etc.

Great illustration though - we may not have eradicated any viruses on the planet - just on the surface. (Paraphrase the article.)

Public health folks think about this a lot. More pressing is things like expanding ranges for major vectors like diseases.

I always wonder where people get these numbers. From what I understand, census bureaus, etc, still only say there are 7.3 billion people on Earth. Where are you getting the other 700,000,000?

Perhaps exact figures were not the point of the comment.

Sort of an aside, but Radiolab recently had an episode about the relatively new class of giant "as big as bacteria" viruses. This appears to be one of those. I found the episode fascinating.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/shrink/

Good post. Though it doesn't really make the distinction that these giant viruses are actually very different from normal viruses. They may have actually "reverse-evolved" from bacteria, and may not even be related to regular viruses.

For anyone who listens to podcasts, there is a great Radiolab about their discovery.

Might be worth noting that story is from March 2014.

Okay this could be a new hollywood introduction to an end of the world scenario. Hopefully we will make it to the end of our days without a zombie outbreak or another end of the world scenario :D

Wasn't this the plot of Prometheus more or less?

"The Dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum... shadow and flame."

Tell you what, if the oil companies unearth a Balrog I'll be joining Greenpeace day and date.

I'd take one Balrog over what they've actually unearthed.

"It comes into the cell, multiplies and finally kills the cell. It is able to kill the amoeba - but it won't infect a human cell."

Haven't there been brain eating amoeba's?

http://www.webmd.com/brain/brain-eating-amoeba

I think it's amazing because, well, what technology do we have that could "come back to life" in 30,000 years frozen?

Nature showing how diverse and robust some of its work is.

Is there any reason to be worried about the ice caps harboring viruses that could potentially wipe us out?

Well, since they're practically wiped out and we're not, I'm not too worried.

I love it when scientists assure us of our safety.

That's not really their job. There might be scientific facts that threaten us and scientific facts that reassure us. To reveal these facts is the job of the scientist.

These scientists? http://www.nature.com/news/us-military-accidentally-ships-li...

This reminds me of a very recent TV series