punjabi_khota Posted December 2, 2010 Posted December 2, 2010 :omg: http://gizmodo.com/5704158/nasa-finds-new-life Hours before their special news conference today, the cat is out of the bag: NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn't share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. This changes everything. Updated. At their conference today, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon will announce that they have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today. Instead of using phosphorus, the bacteria uses arsenic. All life on Earth is made of six components: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same. But not this one. This one is completely different. We knew that there were microorganisms that processed arsenic, but this bacteria—discovered in the poisonous Mono Lake, California—is actually made of arsenic, with phosphorus absent from its DNA. The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don't have to be like planet Earth. No details have been disclosed about the origin or nature of this new life form. We will know more today at 2pm EST but, while this life hasn't been found in another planet, this discovery does indeed change everything we know about biology. I don't know about you but I've not been so excited about a bacteria since my STD tests came back clean. And that's without counting yesterday's announcement on the discovery of a massive number of red dwarf stars, which may harbor a trillion Earths, dramatically increasing our chances of finding extraterrestrial life. [NOS—In Dutch]
punjabi_khota Posted December 2, 2010 Author Posted December 2, 2010 This is massive. One thing it implies is that there could be life where we haven't bothered to look because we thought those places don't have the right material to sustain life . :nice:
cowboysfan Posted December 2, 2010 Posted December 2, 2010 great news.there has always been speculation that life exists on Titan(saturn's moon) .These entities will be methane based .They should find a way to test this theory.
f.b.m Posted December 2, 2010 Posted December 2, 2010 Its earth made as far as I know. Anyway, great find! On a broader note I have always been bugged by both 'alien seekers' and 'fine tuning' god people when they speak of life, when what they mean in carbon based life. Neither spend much time defining what life is to start with.
Ram Posted December 2, 2010 Posted December 2, 2010 Wowwwwwwwwwwww....! :omg: That is like HUGEEEEEEEEEEEE News..! It has so many massive implications in so many ways. One obvious implication is of course, the prospect of life elsewhere in the solar system and beyond, the other one is the question of evolution as well. They're already talking about whether life 'started' in the earth multiple times and if there's a 'shadow' biosphere that we dont know about.
Online Posted December 2, 2010 Posted December 2, 2010 Wowwwwwwwwwwww....! :omg: That is like HUGEEEEEEEEEEEE News..! It has so many massive implications in so many ways. how? why?
The Outsider Posted December 2, 2010 Posted December 2, 2010 Few points : 1. The article in the OP says that the bacteria 'discovered' was 'made of Arsenic'. That is not accurate. The discovered bacteria was the regular Phosphorus based life form, but the Phosphorus was gradually removed and replaced by Arsenic in the lab. Thus, the origin of these bacteria are still the same as the rest of life on Earth. 2. In 2006, the existence of such bacteria was predicted. That is pretty amazing. 3. It will lead to new challenges about how to probe alien life in the future. All space probes sent out till now have been based on detecting life forms like on Earth. This will certainly open up a whole new challenge regarding detection of life forms like these. 4. In their experiments, the scientists found that the bacteria still preferred Phosphorus over Arsenic. Guess that opens up the question whether similar life forms would be observed in nature where the organism has a choice between the two elements and whether something based on Arsenic can really build up from scratch.
Chaos Posted December 3, 2010 Posted December 3, 2010 Few points : 1. The article in the OP says that the bacteria 'discovered' was 'made of Arsenic'. That is not accurate. The discovered bacteria was the regular Phosphorus based life form, but the Phosphorus was gradually removed and replaced by Arsenic in the lab. Thus, the origin of these bacteria are still the same as the rest of life on Earth. 2. In 2006, the existence of such bacteria was predicted. That is pretty amazing. 3. It will lead to new challenges about how to probe alien life in the future. All space probes sent out till now have been based on detecting life forms like on Earth. This will certainly open up a whole new challenge regarding detection of life forms like these. 4. In their experiments, the scientists found that the bacteria still preferred Phosphorus over Arsenic. Guess that opens up the question whether similar life forms would be observed in nature where the organism has a choice between the two elements and whether something based on Arsenic can really build up from scratch. mayne... you are expert in algebra and biology?. I bet NASA would hire u right off the bat if i submit them ur proposal u gave us here... :hmmm:
Zap_Brannigan Posted December 3, 2010 Posted December 3, 2010 This proves God is gr8 :P Yes...time to start a religion with a arsenic based God!!
IKnowU Posted December 3, 2010 Posted December 3, 2010 mayne... you are expert in algebra and biology?. I bet NASA would hire u right off the bat if i submit them ur proposal u gave us here... :hmmm: I think he is astrophysicist if I remember correctly. :hatsoff:
gs Posted December 3, 2010 Posted December 3, 2010 Found this funny line on Colbert Report. Scientists at NASA have found a new form of life and even that has refused to date them! :giggle:
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