Precisely, because it constitutes a venture into the unknown, pursuing novel ideas requires a special set of circumstances. Of course, this is not uncommon for novel findings-their true value may remain unknown for a while, even if the work later spurs new ideas and scientific breakthroughs. It generated a few citations but did not manage to attract the attention of the wider community of biologists (Bhattacharya & Packalen, 2020). When it was published in the Journal of Bacteriology, the work by Brock and Freeze went largely undetected. From a sample of pink bacteria collected from Mushroom Spring, Brock and his student isolated a prokaryotic organism thriving at 70☌, which they named Thermus aquaticus-after the Greek word for “hot” and the Latin for “water.” The ability of an enzyme (DNA polymerase) from Thermus aquaticus to tolerate high temperatures would later spur the invention of the polymerase chain reaction or PCR, which won biochemist Kary Mullis a share of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and revolutionized biomedicine. What drew their interest was that some organisms seem to thrive in the hot springs sprinkled throughout the park. In the late 1960s, Thomas Brock, a microbiologist from Cleveland, and his undergraduate student Hudson Freeze conducted research in Yellowstone National Park. Unlike the grapes that give birth to dry whites and luscious reds, some organisms flourish in extremely hot environments, however.
Case in point-in 2021, French winemakers recorded the smallest harvest since 1957 due to rising temperatures. Most living things do not like extreme heat.
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