More than 1700 ancient viruses found inside a glacier in China: what is the danger to humanity

Scientists have found more than 1700 ancient viruses hiding deep inside a glacier in western China. Interestingly, most of these dangerous elements have never been seen before.

This discovery is a cause for concern. After all, climate change, which stimulates ice melting, can release pathogens unknown to science and provoke a deadly pandemic, writes DailyMail.

A team of researchers led by Ohio State University drilled more than 300 meters into the Gulia Glacier, a huge ice cap located in the northwest of the Tibetan Plateau. The experts divided the resulting ice core into nine segments, each representing a different time horizon and culmination period.

The segments ranged in age from 160 to 41,000 years. The scientists extracted DNA from each segment and used metagenomic analysis to identify each individual strain of the virus. According to the scientists, they cataloged about 50 times more viral information than scientists have ever collected from glaciers.

Through their analysis, the researchers found that the viral communities looked very different depending on the climatic conditions during their freezing. For example, a distinct community of viruses formed 11,500 years ago as the climate transitioned from the cold last glacial stage to the warmer Holocene epoch we are currently in.

"This at least points to a potential link between viruses and climate change," said study co-author and microbiology researcher ZhiPing Zhong of The Ohio State University.

In the end, scientists managed to identify 1700 viruses. According to scientists, fortunately, none of them can cause disease in humans, animals, or even plants. They can only infect archaea, which are single-celled organisms, and bacteria.

Interestingly, a day after the scientists published their study, the famous actor and rapper Chris "Ludacris" Bridges posted a video of himself drinking melt water from an Alaskan glacier.

The video garnered millions of views on TikTok and Instagram, sparking a wave of concern that he was risking his life by drinking untreated water from the glacier. But scientists later said that "he is fine" and that the water from the melting glacier is "the cleanest water ever obtained."

However, public concerns are not unfounded. After all, sometimes deadly pathogens are recorded that appear as a result of permafrost melting. For example, in 2016, anthrax spores leaked out of the remains of an animal that had been lying in the permafrost of Siberia for 75 years. As a result, dozens of people were hospitalized and one child died.

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