NASA announcement today: the discovery of a new lifeform unlike anything else.

[manythings]

Oh my. Even though I didn't expect it to be something like an alien, I'm still a little disappointed that it was just a bacteria. Though, the fact that it's DNA is completely different from ours, makes it kind of interesting.

More than kind of interesting. If life can evolve to use something as toxic as arsenic (really nasty stuff, better known as rat poison), we have to discount our previous assumptions that everything needs to be "perfect" for life to exist. In other words, we can now search for life just about everywhere, as the chance of finding it is no longer zero. This is a groundbreaking discovery, and I'd expect somebody to get a Nobel for it if they can show the evolutionary mechanism.

Don't forget toxicity and the nature of "poison" is a very subjective concept. Pretty much anything can be a poison under the right/wrong circumstances. Hell the air we breathe is incredibly hazardous without the right enzymes to neutralise free oxygen and hydrogen peroxide.

 

[Hader]

Maybe I'm wrong but wasn't it hypothesised in the 80's that ammonia could work since there was a fair amount around back in the primordial times?

I am not sure, as I said just going off the top of my head remembering an article that more or less introduced me to the idea.

 

[thethingthatlurks]

Oh my. Even though I didn't expect it to be something like an alien, I'm still a little disappointed that it was just a bacteria. Though, the fact that it's DNA is completely different from ours, makes it kind of interesting.

More than kind of interesting. If life can evolve to use something as toxic as arsenic (really nasty stuff, better known as rat poison), we have to discount our previous assumptions that everything needs to be "perfect" for life to exist. In other words, we can now search for life just about everywhere, as the chance of finding it is no longer zero. This is a groundbreaking discovery, and I'd expect somebody to get a Nobel for it if they can show the evolutionary mechanism.

Don't forget toxicity and the nature of "poison" is a very subjective concept. Pretty much anything can be a poison under the right/wrong circumstances. Hell the air we breathe is incredibly hazardous without the right enzymes to neutralise free oxygen and hydrogen peroxide.

Not quite. While toxicity is relative for the lifeforms we know about, for example cyano bacteria thriving on stuff that would kill us, Arsenic is an element which has always been considered toxic to all life. It is far easier for an organism to adapt to large, more specialized compounds (eg penicillin resistant bacteria) than to individual elements. Also, our atmosphere doesn't contain a whole lot of H2O2, just to point that out.

 

[TerribleAssassin]

This is some pretty big news, it pretty much confirms that there could be life on other planets. I bet somewhere some aliens are laughing that we only just discovered this, bastards.

Stupid green men! (Racist under-current...)


OT: This may seem small, but soon we will be living with giant grey men that speak their own language, or just a odd few thousand slender men...

 

[Anarchemitis]

That means that this blue zone

Just got bigger.

Okay no it doesn't, but it does increase the statistical probability that we'll find extraterrestrial life.

 

[wearesoneutralthatithurts]

I've always thought that life on other planets probably wouldn't need oxygen to live, they're aliens for gods sake! They could breathe nitrogen and shit jelly beans!

there are bacteria which are an aerob, which means that they dont need oxygen as an acceptor for electrons. some are usin nitrate, some sulfur (i think SO4-)
fore some bacterie, oxygen is poisonous(oxygenradicals)

some bacteria retain nitrogen from the air. most of them live in symbiosis with legumes such as peas or beans (rhizobium)

but arsenic as a substitute for phosphor. that means that the dna has arsenic instead of phosphor. and adenosinetriphosphate is nor adenosintriarsenic?

thats so cool. i am celebrating mother nature and i love bacteria. they are sooo wonderful (except the troublemakers. ricksettia arent nice, yersinia pestis is even worse)

 

[Chrono212]

I'm not suprised.
Sci-fi and individual ideas have since long time ago already concluded this as an possibility.
NASA have been slow but one could argue that they've wanted proof. Well, now they have. Good Going.

I always thought that the levels of beuracracy that they have thrown in (e.g. the United Nations Office of Outer Space affairs appointing an official Ambassador of Earth) over the years that it may take so long for a first contact to actually filter through to us normal folk

Also @Zeithri: *wave* ^^

 

[Spacewolf]

Not quite. While toxicity is relative for the lifeforms we know about, for example cyano bacteria thriving on stuff that would kill us, Arsenic is an element which has always been considered toxic to all life. It is far easier for an organism to adapt to large, more specialized compounds (eg penicillin resistant bacteria) than to individual elements. Also, our atmosphere doesn't contain a whole lot of H2O2, just to point that out.

but you do produce it in your body, so is this lake deep then i would of expected something like this to of been found in a volcanic vent area

 

[MadeinHell]

Well I'll be honest. I did not expect anything huge (I would probably freak out if they placed a gray alien in the conference ;P), but that is kinda disappointing. I mean, I realise how important this is to astrobiology (now we have proof that living beings can be built in a different way than US) but I hoped for at least finding life in one of the moons of our solar systems.

Oh well . Guess we have to wait a few more years for our first contact .

 

[Altorin]

That means that this blue zone

Just got bigger.

Okay no it doesn't, but it does increase the statistical probability that we'll find extraterrestrial life.

that "Goldilocks Zone" (and in fact, the Term "Goldilocks Zone") has proliferated my group of friends. It's meant to describe something that's "just right" between two extremes, but the etymology of the phrase in our group is actually referring to that habitable zone around stars, rather then the 3 bears story.

on topic, this is sort of disappointing, but if science has taught me anything, it's taught me that it doesn't matter two shits if there's anything out there, because there is NOTHING close enough that we could ever realistically contact. So for all intents and purposes, we're alone. We're statistically not really ALONE, but we're so isolated in our own galaxy (let alone the universe) that we may as well be cosmically alone.

 

[thethingthatlurks]

Not quite. While toxicity is relative for the lifeforms we know about, for example cyano bacteria thriving on stuff that would kill us, Arsenic is an element which has always been considered toxic to all life. It is far easier for an organism to adapt to large, more specialized compounds (eg penicillin resistant bacteria) than to individual elements. Also, our atmosphere doesn't contain a whole lot of H2O2, just to point that out.

but you do produce it in your body, so is this lake deep then i would of expected something like this to of been found in a volcanic vent area

Arsenic? No you don't produce it in any biological mechanism, and none utilize it in any way as far as I know. Arsenic is quite toxic, and is best avoided. There are quite a few elements that are not used in any known biological system, such as Helium, Neon, Cesium 137, Plutonium, etc. Or did you mean hydrogen peroxide? It's quite harmless, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it as part of some process, but it's been many a moon since I took biochem.
Now what do hydrothermal vents add? The life that is found around them is resistant to high temperatures, and use sulfur and iron more than land bacteria, but there is no arsenic involved. Now Mono lake is quite interesting in terms of alkalinity, but I don't know of any active hydrothermal vents in the area.

 

[Quaxar]

Well, if only the live stream had worked for me, I'd have loved to see that conference.
But yeah, I just read it as soon as it was online and even though it may look small that's a huge thing actually.

 

[Evilsanta]

SWEET! Only thing we need now is viable space travel and we can get going on finding hot alien chicks!

OT: Well that is awesome.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Well while its not the massive leap everyone wanted, it is still interesting nonetheless to see a lifeform that is completely unique on Earth.

It is the massive leap that everyone wanted, the problem is that 90% of the 'general populace' doesn't recognise it as such.

 

[Aiden_the-Joker1]

Ha. nothing can stop SCIENCE.

 

[Baldry]

BOW DOWN TO THIS SUPERIOR BACTERIA!

Uhm...Well hot damn that was unexpected...Can't wait to see how this affects the future and stuff.

 

[EHKOS]

The interesting thing is that science fiction writers have been predicting stuff like this for years. Michael Crichton's Sphere has a great speech about how if we ever do meet aliens, both their biology and state could be so fundamentally different from us that it would be impossible to interact. He then made random examples, including an alien that exhales arsenic, one that stabs you in the chest as a way of shaking hands, etc.

This is why I never trusted science class. This is why we don't need these stupid rules like "All life needs to do these seven things" or shit like that. This is truly an amazing discovery. Maybe now scientists will stop being so closed minded.