New Species

[Panman]

Not fishing but interesting. Makes you wonder what else is awaiting the curious.

Tim

http://mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll...NEWS/711200303

[Steve Molcsan]

Fascinating !


Thanks for bringing it to our attention!

[DShock]

Tim,
That is an amazing discovery!
Doug

[Flyandtie1]

Truly amazing

[Gnu Bee Flyer]

Neat stuff.

I can't believe a scientist after doing all that work to prove it is a new species wouldn't collect some of the bubbles to determine what kind of gas they are. Scientists are the most curious about the unknown. It would tell them so much about the respiration of the mushroom. To just leave it at "an unknown gas" seems a bit short sighted IMO

[JeffHamm]

Really cool stuff.

Oh, and Gnu Bee Flyer, Scientists are under pressure to publish papers. So, they publish this paper to announce the finding, and you can be sure that they will have a 2nd paper in the works that is determining what the gass is and so forth. A fair number of publications will follow, documenting all the interesting (and not so interesting) details. If they waited until they had all of this information, they would only get one paper (sure, a better more complete paper with all the information in one place, but University Administration granting agencies still just see one publication rather than five - I mean, five must be better than one, right?) Be asured, the "unknown gass" won't be unknown for long.

- Jeff

[Gnu Bee Flyer]

I had not thought of that aspect of it. It makes sense I suppose. You do need grant money to carry on and published papers are the way to get it. Discovery of a new species such as this one probably gets the finder huge praise from colleagues and maybe even tenure somewhere.

PS. My wife always seems to need to know the origin of mysterious unknown gases right away.

I think it is probably so I can be blamed for one more thing in a row.

[mashtom]

Very cool, I think it great that new discoveries are still being made. here is one from earlier this year http://www.boston.com/news/science/a...a_cave/?page=1