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Microbiologist by Day, Pro-wrestler by Night
by Robert Lamb | October 27, 2010
I never expected bring up professional wrestling in a science blog, but that was before NOVA’s “The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers” devoted an episode to microbiologist Rachel Collins.
In her day job, Rachel tests antibiotics on various strains of bacteria for a Saint Louis lab. On the weekends, however, she laces up her green and black boots and climbs into the wrestling ring as “MsChif.”
The gigantic oil giant BP had to have been happy to get some good press on October 20, the 6-month anniversary of the beginning one of the two worst oil spills in U.S. history. The explosion that killed 11 rig workers and destroyed the well in the Gulf of Mexico, which ultimately released about 140 million gallons of oil, creating a slick twice the size of New Jersey (about 16,000 square miles).
So I dropped by the local YMCA for a swim over the weekend and was disappointed to find that the pool was “closed for routine maintenance.” Disappointed, I hit the sauna and wound up chatting with a mechanical engineer. In the midst of our discussion, he nodded toward the empty pool.
“You know why they closed it, right?”
“Routine maintenance?” I ventured.
“Nah man,” he replied. “A little kid pooped in the pool.”
The following video is fascinating – it demonstrates the use of microbes in Texas to clean up oil floating on the ocean as well as oil that has contaminated marshes and wetlands…
There are several fascinating quotes in the following video, including: “Amazingly, the Census of Marine Life estimates that all microbes in the global ocean collectively weigh the equivalent of 240 billion African elephants.” An African elephant weights approximately 10,000 pounds, so let’s say they weigh as much as 70 average people. So the microbes weigh [...]
Dr. Frankenstein, if you’re reading this, you have reason to feel a little vindicated. While the modern scientific community may laugh at your use of harnessed lightning bolts to animate a stitched-up monster, they’re at least admitting that lightning may have played a vital role in the evolution of life on Earth.
Might ancient microbes have traveled to Earth aboard meteorites? Russian scientists plan to put this theory to the test by sending a canister of Earth life on a round trip to the Martian moon of Phobos. Will these life forms come back alive or potentially contaminate other worlds?
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