NASA Finds New Life

bobman1235

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.

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. Discovered in the poisonous Mono Lake, California, this bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible. 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.

AsSiMiLaTeD

Very cool

newrival

WOW

thats incredible

Jstas

That's old news! NASA found life years ago when the rovers first hit Mars! They even have photographic evidence!







In all seriousness, I saw that earlier, pretty cool.

mudwrx

It was also just announced recently that there may be 3 times as many stars in the known universe as we once thought. That brings the number of stars to 300 sextillion.

If you want to see the number:

300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

I do not think it is impossible other life is out there. As a matter of fact, it is probable.

If it's what we consider intelligent life is another story, but it's almost impossible there is not other life out there somewhere.

Systems

is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible

They obviously did not know my ex-wife!~:eek:~

nooshinjohn

Wikileaks has decided to dump the images of the new life form that NASA does not want the public to see... They are here people!:biggrin:

Face

Jstas

Face wrote: »

Sweet.

vc69

Great news. They have been on a quest to find this sort of life form here on our planet for quite some time. It seemed to me that it was inevitable they would succeed. I have "believed" this was possible, but finding the proof is quite astounding. We are definitely running headlong into the 21st century.

kevhed72

"I don't know about you but I've not been so excited about a bacteria since my STD tests came back clean"
QUOTE from last paragraph of story (???)

bobman1235

kevhed72 wrote: »

"I don't know about you but I've not been so excited about a bacteria since my STD tests came back clean"
QUOTE from last paragraph of story (???)

Haha. Gizmodo is just a blog that posts links / summaries to other news, so I wouldn't expect CNN-level copy

kevhed72

Story is legit though....on the NASA website. Very interesting...

nguyendot

Lasareath wrote: »

I've seen all this stuff before on the hundreds star trek episodes. Everything in star trek eventually comes true!

Thanks for your post.

Wasnt that episode about silicon life? ugly bags of mostly water!

tonyb

Not really ground breaking news. Look at earths atmosphere 4 billion years ago. Not exactly friendly,yet life survives,evolves. Our DNA, or elements that are common in all living things,are taken from elements that were already here at the begining. Life will form from the basic elements available to it. A planet in and of itself is a living thing, each with it's own coarse of evolution by the elements native to it. The only thing one can gather from this story is, if you run into any aliens, don't touch them,they may be poisonous.

bobman1235

Sure it's groundbreaking news from a scientific standpoint. All study of life throughout the course of history has made certain assumptions about the building blocks of life, and this changes those assumptions. It may not be big news in that it doesn't affect you directly, but it affects the way we know the world around us. That's huge.

Ron-P

Very cool indeed.

Been to that lake many times, in fact, who knows what western was filmed there? I was there during the filming and got to see the town first hand.

cstmar01

mudwrx wrote: »

It was also just announced recently that there may be 3 times as many stars in the known universe as we once thought. That brings the number of stars to 300 sextillion.

If you want to see the number:

300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

I do not think it is impossible other life is out there. As a matter of fact, it is probable.

If it's what we consider intelligent life is another story, but it's almost impossible there is not other life out there somewhere.

I wanna be a sextillionre..

Now thats baller status right there son.

thats pretty cool though, congrats on the find, maybe District 9 isn't so far off after all...dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnn.

tonyb

Yeah, the building blocks of life on our planet, not others. Mostly because we can only study what we have to work with but if one assumes all life must be generated by our own building blocks, to me thats a tad narrow minded. Also if you want to read deeper into it,one can say science, has been proven wrong by this story. Life can exist outside our known beliefs of the composition of it's make up. There is still so much we have yet to discover. The key in my opinion,is to throw out the window all know scientific theory as to what is possible and what isn't. This can be a process to a discovery of a new energy source if we just look outside the box. What once was thought of as impossible,is now possible, now reality. History proves it.

bobman1235

tonyb wrote: »

Yeah, the building blocks of life on our planet, not others. Mostly because we can only study what we have to work with but if one assumes all life must be generated by our own building blocks, to me thats a tad narrow minded. Also if you want to read deeper into it,one can say science, has been proven wrong by this story. Life can exist outside our known beliefs of the composition of it's make up. There is still so much we have yet to discover. The key in my opinion,is to throw out the window all know scientific theory as to what is possible and what isn't. This can be a process to a discovery of a new energy source if we just look outside the box. What once was thought of as impossible,is now possible, now reality. History proves it.

Science is proven wrong all the time. That's what makes it awesome. Unlike most people, especially around here, who are always right, scientists are always proving each other wrong and updating what we know. I have no idea what kind of world you envision where we "throw out all scientific theory." Just learning something new doesn't make everything we've knwon WRONG, it just means there's MORE. And the laws of physics and the composition of matter are all, as far as we've been able to determine, valid throughout the Universe. So no, I don't think we should "throw out" what we know of our world just because there's more to learn.

Fongolio

Lasareath wrote: »

I've seen all this stuff before on the hundreds star trek episodes. Everything in star trek eventually comes true!

Thanks for your post.

Pauly

Ohhhh, you want to cut our budget well look what we found....

LOL

Pauly

tonyb

bobman1235 wrote: »

Science is proven wrong all the time. That's what makes it awesome. Unlike most people, especially around here, who are always right, scientists are always proving each other wrong and updating what we know. I have no idea what kind of world you envision where we "throw out all scientific theory." Just learning something new doesn't make everything we've knwon WRONG, it just means there's MORE. And the laws of physics and the composition of matter are all, as far as we've been able to determine, valid throughout the Universe. So no, I don't think we should "throw out" what we know of our world just because there's more to learn.

I hear ya, but my point is, if you only look for something in the narrow area defined by the laws of physics, you may not discover what is deemed impossible. Even the very laws of physics have been re-defined over the years. Regardless, I think we can both agree that supplying the scientific community with some cash is the way to new discovery for the way forward, for us as a species and for the planet.

AudioGenics

facinating

newrival

tonyb wrote: »

Regardless, I think we can both agree that supplying the scientific community with some cash is the way to new discovery for the way forward, for us as a species and for the planet.

Agreed! lets keep the scientists and astronauts employed!!!!!:biggrin:

More importantly, lets keep this country the pioneer and leader in scientific and technological development that we have been for decades. Its sad that most chemists now work for pharmaceutical companies now because theyre the only ones paying the salaries. It's not just chemistry. If anyone is familiar with CERN, or the Large Hadron Collider, you may be interested to know that that was to be built not far from my house outside chicago. It was fought by all kinds of lunatics who thought the world would implode on itself from this machine and it met so much resistance and regulation they moved it over seas. That alone wouldve employed tens of hundreds of scientists. Not to mention all the construction contractors and workers for a decade.

There seems to be a trend of some American's being afraid of being the best, of exceptionalism, of standing out. I had a friend who said "who needs astronauts. anyways? We've alredy been to the moon." It's sad, I feel this is a common sentiment. But people dont realize that without the manned space flight program we wouldnt have GPS, Cell phones, or many electronics we use EVERYDAY.

Aside from this, manned space flight is an economic boon. For every dollar spent in the manned spaceflight program, seven are created in the marketplace by way of consumer goods. Here's an interesting quote of
Joan Vernikos on the R.O.I. of space travel: “Economic, scientific and technological returns of space exploration have far exceeded the investment. … Royalties on NASA patents and licenses currently go directly to the U.S. Treasury, not back to NASA.”

Sorry for the rant, and I may be preaching to the choir here, but I feel very passionately about this subject. I'm not happy with "good enoug," and for te last few centuries, neither has this country. Sotries like this make me optimistic that we'll pick ourselves up and realize that there's more, to aspire to something greater than "good enough."

newrival

Sorry...sometimes i get a little carried away. Hope I didn't kill the thread!

mhardy6647

They found bugs in Mono Lake in CA that contain aresenic (in the form, presumably, of arsenate) in lieu of phosphorus (in the form of phosphate). This is a big deal, but not quite the transcendental exo-biology event that some seem to want it to be.

Published in Science Express today; also a blurb in The Scientist. I'll provide the link to the latter; free registration is most likely required to read it, though.
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/57851/

kuntasensei

I'm just glad that arsenic is now considered a building block of life... 'cause now I can pass off all those hookers I poisoned as "testing some theories". :biggrin:

Polkersince85

There may be some unique lifeforms on this forum: Dumphuchas idioti

obieone

It's Kailfornia, the whole state is ABNORMAL!