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

[Frozen Donkey Wheel2]

From the thread announcing the press conference several days ago:

Yeah, it's probably bacteria at absolute BEST. More likely, it's just something stupid, like some new detail that HINTS as POSSIBLE bacteria SOMEWHERE. That's what it usually is with these things.

I rest my case.

 

[Faladorian]

Yeah, things dont need to be like creatures on earth. Y'know, when earth was formed, oxygen was poisonous to the native bacteria and they found out how to utilize it to create energy for themselves. Hence why we breathe

 

[thethingthatlurks]

From the thread announcing the press conference several days ago:

Yeah, it's probably bacteria at absolute BEST. More likely, it's just something stupid, like some new detail that HINTS as POSSIBLE bacteria SOMEWHERE. That's what it usually is with these things.

I rest my case.

*bows before your prescience*

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

I don't know why everyone is getting so excited about aliens, we haven't discovered hyperspace yet, so we can't go anywhere. Still, though, it's cool to know that there's yet another way to refute religion now.

 

[thethingthatlurks]

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.

Oi! We ain't no close minded fools! We, that is us glorious theoreticians, are usually pretty good about accepting weird stuff, otherwise there would be no quantum-stuff. Biologists on the other hand...

 

[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.

Oi! We ain't no close minded fools! We, that is us glorious theoreticians, are usually pretty good about accepting weird stuff, otherwise there would be no quantum-stuff. Biologists on the other hand...

I honestly don't believe energy cannot be created or destroyed. There has to be so instance in which this is false.

 

[theultimateend]

Dosen't that pretty much mean that there could now be life on Mars?

At this point I'm not sure of anyone who seriously thinks that bacterial life is not all over the universe.

It's really hard to say that without just completely living within your own rectum.

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.

To be a scientist you must not be close minded.

If you are close minded, you are not a scientist, regardless of what your job title on your paycheck states.

Most close mindedness is because of those who fund the scientists, leaving the scientist with the option of "confirmation" or "termination".

 

[thethingthatlurks]

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.

Oi! We ain't no close minded fools! We, that is us glorious theoreticians, are usually pretty good about accepting weird stuff, otherwise there would be no quantum-stuff. Biologists on the other hand...

I honestly don't believe energy cannot be created or destroyed. There has to be so instance in which this is false.

Well, there's the first law of thermodynamics, which states that energy is comprised of heat and work. There is a ton of weird stuff in the quantum world. For example, a particle can burrow through a potential barrier for which it would ordinarily lack the energy (called tunneling), or even stranger, particles can appear randomly in space. However, energy is always conserved in these processes, and we have yet to find an exception to it.

 

[White_Hawk]

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.

YAY! pehaps we will eventually meet alien life after all, at least this brordens our horisen.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

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.

The last one could go vary badly if we don't realise it or they don't realise it and someone makes an apology.

I don't know why everyone is getting so excited about aliens, we haven't discovered hyperspace yet, so we can't go anywhere. Still, though, it's cool to know that there's yet another way to refute religion now.

Can we not have a thread about science without someone saying something bad about religion? I mean really? Also this is little to do with religion religion never said everything had to be based on sulfur, phosphorus, etc. It has said other things that are a bit crazy but this has little to do with religion.

 

[krimson_dropz]

thats pretty impressive. well if i didn't believe in life on other planets before i do now.

 

[ryanxm]

not an alien? darn my hopes were up

oh well still cool a new life form!

 

[Denamic]

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.

Well, we use oxygen.
That's pretty damn toxic too.

 

[theultimateend]

Can we not have a thread about science without someone saying something bad about religion? I mean really? Also this is little to do with religion religion never said everything had to be based on sulfur, phosphorus, etc. It has said other things that are a bit crazy but this has little to do with religion.

The general desire to bring up religion stems from the sections of religious texts that dictate how the universe works and less on the entire institution.

Had faith >only< discussed how to be good and how the afterlife works I doubt there would still be problems.

I mean, there probably would be, but they'd make far less sense.

 

[GoodApprentice]

Bacteria is so simple that its requirements for life are extremely low. Bacteria can be found existing in unbelievably harsh places on earth, yet they have been unable to evolve further. It's highly unlikely that a more advanced organism could develop along the same toxic path as this bacteria.

Basically, we have a greater chance of finding bacteria, but nothing greater, on other planets.

 

[thethingthatlurks]

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.

Well, we use oxygen.
That's pretty damn toxic too.

Nope, oxygen is highly reactive. Toxicity usually implies some nasty irreversible substitution, which oxygen doesn't do. The big news with this article is that this bacterium uses arsenic, which has generally been considered toxic to all known life.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Can we not have a thread about science without someone saying something bad about religion? I mean really? Also this is little to do with religion religion never said everything had to be based on sulfur, phosphorus, etc. It has said other things that are a bit crazy but this has little to do with religion.

The general desire to bring up religion stems from the sections of religious texts that dictate how the universe works and less on the entire institution.

Had faith >only< discussed how to be good and how the afterlife works I doubt there would still be problems.

I mean, there probably would be, but they'd make far less sense.

I do see what you're saying but I still think it is really pointless and petty to bring up religion in every single thread related to Science. It seems to be a bit of an OCD thing on the Escapist not to offend anyone that has OCD. Just same as every thread even remotely to do with JRPGs has to bring up Final Fantasy and how it is the only JRPG and then bring up FFVII. It gets really irritating seeing these same thigns pop up time and time again.

 

[thedoclc]

Dosen't that pretty much mean that there could now be life on Mars?

No. That would be overreaching based on what's been learned, cart before the horse, etc.

That does not mean life could never have existed on Mars, or that there isn't any now. Scientists are actively looking for signs of some microbial life there, whether fossilized or currently alive. This, however, only establishes that on earth, there are at least some organisms which do not form DNA or RNA like all other known viruses and cells, and therefore that life without high phosphorus is possible.

It expands the environments we could look for life with some expectation of finding it, but it's a long way to saying, "Mars."

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.

Science is about evidence. Speculative fiction is speculative fiction. For every idea from speculative fiction to be proven correct, there are whole buckets of ideas which are rubbish long since passed on. Even when something out of speculative fiction turns out to be correct, sci-fi authors are rarely in the position to explain the how or why of the manner by which the thing they've dreamed up works. This organism will have to have a biochemistry radically different from anything already known.

Or, to play the TV Tropes game: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScienceMarchesOn

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.

You do realize that all prior known life used said elements, the statement used is almost always "all known living organisms do X," and that this was found BY scientists, who were open-minded enough to actually sift through the mud, examine the evidence, and overturn a long-standing doctrine as soon as the evidence that the doctrine was wrong was found? How is it closed-minded to say, "We've never observed a species which uses anything besides phosphate in its nucleic acid. So it seems phosphorus is necessary for nucleic acids." "Hey, look, this uses arsenic!" "Hell yeah, that's neat; time to change the textbooks and start poking this bacteria to see how it works." The reaction of all my fellow med students and our professors was, "That's cool as shit...let's look at it after tomorrow's final."

Yeah, things dont need to be like creatures on earth. Y'know, when earth was formed, oxygen was poisonous to the native bacteria and they found out how to utilize it to create energy for themselves. Hence why we breathe

Oxygen was a waste product which was toxic to many microbes, but hardly all. Some bacteria still find oxygen highly toxic (including those which cause tetanus), while others are unable to use it but can tolerate its presence. Some find oxygen as necessary as we do, while others require it, but cannot tolerate concentrations above apprx 5% of the local atmosphere. Oxygen is unnecessary but useful for others. Not all eukaryotes need oxygen either, as exemplified by that miracle of yeast piss, beer. It seems all highly complex eukaryotes, however, do need oxygen. It's likely that the existence of some sort of electronegative dump for red-ox reactions is needed for the kind of metabolism able to power anything like us. Fortunately, oxygen is a rather common element in the universe, and we can certainly imagine all kinds of neat possibilities. But imagination is just that.

Dosen't that pretty much mean that there could now be life on Mars?

At this point I'm not sure of anyone who seriously thinks that bacterial life is not all over the universe.

It's really hard to say that without just completely living within your own rectum.

Probable, yes, but that doesn't move anything away from the null hypothesis until evidence is found.

I don't know why everyone is getting so excited about aliens, we haven't discovered hyperspace yet, so we can't go anywhere. Still, though, it's cool to know that there's yet another way to refute religion now.

Speaking as averred atheist, what the hell does this have to do with religion? Even the least intelligent creationist would reply, "God decided to make these bacteria so they could survive in the environment He decided to place them in." Even someone who takes the Bible as literal fact could make such an argument without contradiction of their view.