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Subject This 830-million-year-old crystal might contain life. And we're about to open it

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From lemons to ham, salt is a handy food preservative. But researchers studying some really old salt crystals found them preserving something else — evidence of life.

"There are little cubes of the original liquid from which that salt grew. And the surprise for us is that we also saw shapes that are consistent with what we would expect from microorganisms," said Kathy Benison, a geologist at West Virginia University. "And they could be still surviving within that 830-million-year-old preserved microhabitat."

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Benison suspects that if there are in fact microorganisms in the crystal, they could be alive in a dormant state. The halite would need to be opened in order to confirm that this is in fact organic matter, and that it is still alive.

While cracking into that crystal might seem a bold choice — we're currently battling a global pandemic caused by microscopic viruses, after all — Benison plans to do just that. But she said there was no need to worry.

"It does sound like a really bad B-movie, but there is a lot of detailed work that's been going on for years to try to figure out how to do that in the safest possible way," she said.

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