Until recently, scientists thought of viruses as mostly small infectious agents, tiny compared to typical bacteria and human cells. So imagine the surprise when biologist Jeff Blanchard and Ph.D. student Lauren Alteio at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with others at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), discovered giant viruses—relatively speaking the size of Macy’s parade day balloons—in soil at Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts.