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

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/26/science/motel-science-discovery.html

49•danso•1h ago

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danso•1h ago

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

ouked•1h ago

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

vixen99•12m ago

Thank you !!

sevenart•1h ago

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

kstrauser•1h 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•1h ago

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

kstrauser•1h 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.

subscribed•52m ago

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

For some reason this is a commonplace in the UK.

Yeah....

stephbook•36m ago

I had a colleague who walked the tiled floor in front of pissoirs in socks..

Brybry•48m 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.

m3kw9•49m ago

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

GTP•29m ago

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

tpict•25m ago

I wonder what the author thinks steampunk means

dekhn•12m 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•14m 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•9m 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.

alpineman•10m ago

All they needed was a blue UV light

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