In an $80 Motel Room, a Discovery to Shed Light on the Origins of Life

GTP•about 1 hour ago

I have an idea on how life could originate in a motel room :D

ouked•about 2 hours ago

https://archive.is/2026.09.26-101638/https://www.nytimes.com...

tpict•about 1 hour ago

I wonder what the author thinks steampunk means

dekhn•about 1 hour ago

Right- that's really just a version of a worm pick. I use similar tools (including a mouth pipette... remember kids, in chemistry: don't pipette by mouth, in biology: oops I think I just inhaled something!) working with tardigrade. If it was steampunk there would be some sort of goggles, leather, gears, and a tincture of laudunum.

oofbey•about 1 hour ago

Why did they work in a motel room? The article kinda implies it had something to do with Trump’s funding cuts, but unless I missed something the connection wasn’t made explicit.

dekhn•about 1 hour ago

I think it's mainly to be close to the sample collection area while also having a place to do microscopy in semi-privacy. Looking at their equipment, I think they bought everything out of pocket and pay for the hotel on their own.

m3kw9•about 1 hour ago

I thought they use built up gunk from years in the bathroom to discover new species, so they choose a cheap motel.

danso•about 2 hours ago

Non-paywall: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/26/science/motel-science-dis...

sevenart•about 2 hours ago

non-paywall (perm): https://archive.ph/QpBF1

kstrauser•about 2 hours ago

Super cool, and I bet housekeeping loved tidying up after turning a motel room into a street biology lab. Honestly, I think I’d prefer to stay in a room previously used to cook meth.

_qua•about 2 hours ago

You think pond water is the worst thing an $80 motel room has seen?

kstrauser•about 2 hours ago

> Jugs of brackish water lined the walls. Buckets overflowed with hunks of marsh grass.

I don’t know, that goes a little above and beyond IMO. One typically doesn’t do science in a house-type setting, for many of the same reasons you don’t carpet a bathroom.

Brybry•about 1 hour ago

Probably poetic license. You can look at the pictures and see everything looks very clean.

The jugs are sealed. We can't see any "overflowing" buckets. Looking at some water samples under a microscope is not really that messy.

subscribed•about 2 hours ago

> for many of the same reasons you don’t carpet a bathroom

For some reason this is a commonplace in the UK.

Yeah....

In an $80 Motel Room, a Discovery to Shed Light on the Origins of Life

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion (15 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews