In an $80 motel room, a discovery to shed light on the origins of life

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

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> "He noticed that the scales were overlapping one another in different directions — in one, they overlapped on top of each other in a clockwise pattern, and the other was in reverse. The fresh eyes of a person who hadn’t been staring at Paulinella for hours identified a curious, distinctive trait. Were they looking at two different species?"

I found it reassuring that sketching what you see down the microscope is still part of a scientific practice. Also the 'fresh eyes' could perhaps point the way to a more collegiate organisation of research.

If you have a decent microscope and want to work on some citizen science that's directly related to the research in this article: https://www.vanettenlab.org/paulinella-consortium

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

this revives my recurring desire to get a good USB microscope. Good, to me, in this context:

a few hundred bucks

able to look at microbes

also able to look at less micro level stuff, like maybe the thing i'm trying to solder or fix

is it wrong to solicit comments/recommendations here?

This was also interesting: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01046-z

All they needed was a blue UV light

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

Quoting the article:

"The team — brought together, in part, by disruptions and despair over the Trump administration’s freezes to federal science funding — then made an exciting discovery."

Apparently this is the new way of life for Scientists under the Trump regime.

Sad.

I don't know what I should've expected, but I am a bit disappointed that they in fact did not find these organisms in the motel room.

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.

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

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

So $80 is considered a "cheap room"? How is a person supposed to earn $80 a day to pay for it and have something left?

Also, cells can have scales? Amazing.

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.