New Life Found!

Kura

Kura

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    https://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/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. While she and other scientists theorized that this could be possible, this is the first discovery. 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.
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    For me this is personally exciting and also a little bit scary! It's reeeally big news to me! What are your thoughts?
     
    don't be too scared, we already had suspicions that life could develop with arsenic and the "this changes everything we know" bit is over exaggerated, while it does contain arsenic it also contains some of the elements we've known to sustain life as well, and the part to get excited about was arsenic sustaining life on its own. albeit this is a good discovery it's really being overblown on a lot of forums i frequent, as one thread goes "what do you think the aliens will do?".
     
    Wait, wait, wait...
    If the bacterium was discovered in a lake in California - which, if I remember correctly - is located on the earth - why did the NASA discover it then? I'm confused now.
     
    This is a pretty bug deal. Having Arsenic interwoven into the DNA structure was widely considered to be impossible before this, and the bacteria was found in a poisonous lake that normally couldn't support life. Now that we know this, this means that life doesn't necessarily need completely earthlike conditions to survive, so alien life just got a potential boost in terms of believability.
     
    Live_Wire466 said:
    This is a pretty bug deal. Having Arsenic interwoven into the DNA structure was widely considered to be impossible before this, and the bacteria was found in a poisonous lake that normally couldn't support life. Now that we know this, this means that life doesn't necessarily need completely earthlike conditions to survive, so alien life just got a potential boost in terms of believability.
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    I don't know about all this Live_Wire466. you might think it's a big deal because the thought never occurred to you that in our surrealistically large universe, there may be life that hasn't developed in the same conditions that we have here on earth. however numerous scientists have speculated the idea since before either of us were born.

    the introduction of arsenic into a ring of compounds on which earth dwelling creatures are comprised of is logistically miniscule in comparison to the total amount of compounds and elements, out of however many hundreds, thousands or millions there are; we have a total of 6 documented, 7 including arsenic. if we were to have a percentage of how likely alien life was before this discovery and after, at most it might move .00000000000000000001. i'm not denying that it's a discovery and i never said that to begin with, i'm only saying you might not want to get pumped up over what somebody could already deduce and what already has been.

    aside from that, the only reason we're calling this organism unearthly is because we just discovered it. who knows how long it's been around, it could have been a compound of life for just as long as either carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus or sulfur. it's beyond me how an organism found on earth can be considered anything but earthly, i think this is really going over a lot of people's heads. lastly, since it isn't exhibited as being a basic building block of life like the aforementioned compounds, the likelihood of it contributing to life are even less than what i demonstrated in my percentile lowering it even more.
     
    Cool, but I can't help but notice how it's merely microscopic. Not to say it's uninteresting anyway, but seeing what these things would be like if sizeable would've been better.

    mondays suck said:
    Wait, wait, wait...
    If the bacterium was discovered in a lake in California - which, if I remember correctly - is located on the earth - why did the NASA discover it then? I'm confused now.
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    If I remember rightly, NASA studies life on Earth as to have a better understanding of what to expect elsewhere.
     
    Stratos99 said:
    I don't know about all this Live_Wire466. you might think it's a big deal because the thought never occurred to you that in our surrealistically large universe, there may be life that hasn't developed in the same conditions that we have here on earth. however numerous scientists have speculated the idea since before either of us were born.

    the introduction of arsenic into a ring of compounds on which earth dwelling creatures are comprised of is logistically miniscule in comparison to the total amount of compounds and elements, out of however many hundreds, thousands or millions there are; we have a total of 6 documented, 7 including arsenic. if we were to have a percentage of how likely alien life was before this discovery and after, at most it might move .00000000000000000001. i'm not denying that it's a discovery and i never said that to begin with, i'm only saying you might not want to get pumped up over what somebody could already deduce and what already has been.

    aside from that, the only reason we're calling this organism unearthly is because we just discovered it. who knows how long it's been around, it could have been a compound of life for just as long as either carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus or sulfur. it's beyond me how an organism found on earth can be considered anything but earthly, i think this is really going over a lot of people's heads. lastly, since it isn't exhibited as being a basic building block of life like the aforementioned compounds, the likelihood of it contributing to life are even less than what i demonstrated in my percentile lowering it even more.
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    What I meant is that the accepted (not necessarily correct) scientific view is that life needs earth-like conditions to exist, and this little bacterium here has a different genetic structure (the Arsenic, which was previously only theorized) compared to other organisms, and it developed in a different way than what we are accustomed to. I'm convinced their is other life in the universe somewhere, and this backs up my belief, that our fantastically large universe can develop life in ways we aren't yet familiar with.
     
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    When NASA announced they were going to reveal something huge, I was hoping it was about aliens. Though I hope this discovery will reveal a lot of things we do not know yet.
     
    Zet said:
    When NASA announced they were going to reveal something huge, I was hoping it was about aliens. Though I hope this discovery will reveal a lot of things we do not know yet.
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    In a way, I feel like this is indeed alien to us. It really reaches into the unknown because it's made of arsenic! So very very poisonous to almost every living thing! I makes my brain explode with wonder and possibilities.
     
    Maybe it will cause the zombie apocalypse that Sammy is oh-so-ready for

    Truth is when Sammy heard that NASA found new life earlier today, Sammy was hoping for something along the lines of the Locust Horde from Gears of War or the Covenant or Flood from Halo

    Sammy hopes for too much...
     
    Eh, call me when you finally discover the dimensional border of Gensokyo, NASA. Even a scandalous picture of Reimu's armpits would work~


    In all seriousness, this is being handled incorrectly. Give the medical community a shot, not NASA.
     
    Shanghai Alice said:
    Eh, call me when you finally discover the dimensional border of Gensokyo, NASA. Even a scandalous picture of Reimu's armpits would work~


    In all seriousness, this is being handled incorrectly. Give the medical community a shot, not NASA.
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    You never know how this can contribute to the medical field someday so don't be so quick to judge .__.
     
    Where it says "made of arsenic" is it literally an arsenic-based life form (unlike all other carbonic life on earth) or does it just have arsenic as part of its DNA? If it's the former, then holy guacamole. If it's just the latter...still, wow. :D

    After doing a quick bit of research, it appears to actually be an arsenic-based life form, which is pretty wow. Basically, what makes this thing pretty amazing is that every other life form on earth is carbon-based, and this uses arsenic-based something-or-rathers as its life building blocks rather than carbon-based proteins and stuff.
     
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    Ninja Caterpie said:
    Where it says "made of arsenic" is it literally an arsenic-based life form (unlike all other carbonic life on earth) or does it just have arsenic as part of its DNA? If it's the former, then holy guacamole. If it's just the latter...still, wow. :D

    After doing a quick bit of research, it appears to actually be an arsenic-based life form, which is pretty wow. Basically, what makes this thing pretty amazing is that every other life form on earth is carbon-based, and this uses arsenic-based something-or-rathers as its life building blocks rather than carbon-based proteins and stuff.
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    Exactly. That makes it a totally unique life form with its own unique genetic structure, which makes this a pretty big development.

    And they just sort of found it, layin around in some toxic lake California. XD
     
    Live_Wire466 said:

    And they just sort of found it, layin around in some toxic lake California. XD
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    Makes me wonder why they were pondering around a toxic lake.

    Just goes to show that you can't really expect anything, nor come to conclusions especially on the topic of toxic lakes XD.
    Pretty unique discovery too.
     
    Well, now that we know that chemically similar elements may be able to replace the essential elements of life we know, it opens up many frontiers upon which lifeforms could possibly be found.

    Hopefully this will make it more simple to accept that life can occur in many forms. We may discover intelligent life forms that are not based on the same elements we are. Who knows?

    Hopefully we discover even MORE weird life like this. I think science needs to be turned upside down about 50 or 60 times more before they get the whole picture properly. XD
     
    Quite Very cool really. It will help convince those that think all life in the universe(s) are like us otherwise, if nothing else.
    Thinking about it, should it really be classed as a bacterium? Surely, seeing as it couldn't be further away from other bacteria (and eathlings in general for that matter) in terms of genetics and, in turn, the way it works (presumably), it should be in it's own arsenic-based kingdom.

    I too am ready. A facebook quiz told me I would survive the zombie apocalypse.
     
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