'Life as we don't know it' discovery could prove existence of aliens

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In a press conference scheduled for tomorrow evening, researchers will unveil the discovery of a microbe that can live in an environment previously thought too poisonous for any life-form to survive.

The bacteria has been found at the bottom of Mono Lake in California's Yosemite National Park which is rich in arsenic – usually poisonous to life.

Somehow the creature uses the arsenic as a way of surviving and this ability raises the prospect that similar life could exist on other planets, which do not have our benevolent atmosphere.

Dr Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist at the Centre for Planetary Sciences in London, said: "If these organisms use arsenic in their metabolism, it demonstrates that there are other forms of life to those we knew of.

...

They believe the creature proves the existence of a second form of life that exists in tandem and before and after intelligent life blooms on planets across the universe.

It follows a growing belief that alien life far from being rare is actually abundant in the universe just in a form that is not recognisable as life.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8174040/Life-as-we-dont-know-it-discovery-could-prove-existence-of-aliens.html

[one...two...tree 2,762]

How else do you think the alien in Alien has acidic blood? Don't you ever watch science fiction?

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More:

Mono Lake, a basin with no outlet, has built up over many millennia one of the highest natural concentrations of arsenic on Earth. Dr Wolfe-Simon is investigating whether, in the mud around the lake or in the water, there exist microbes whose biological make-up is so fundamentally different from that of any known life on Earth that it may provide proof of a shadow biosphere, a second genesis for life on this planet.

Arsenic is chemically close to phosphorus. While phosphorus is a primary building block of life on Earth — an essential component of DNA and ATP, the energy molecule — arsenic is a deadly poison. In Mono Lake there are micro-organisms that live with arsenic. But they don’t incorporate it into their biology.

Dr Wolfe-Simon has theorised that there may be life that chose an “evolutionary pathway” to utilise arsenic. If such microbes existed, it could suggest that life started on our planet not once but at least twice. In turn this would help to support the idea that life is much more likely to have started elsewhere in the galaxy.

“There is life ‘as we know it’ and there is life ‘as we don’t know it’. What would that look like? I am trying to give us a framework to work with to help us look for what ‘we don’t know’, the particular framework of arsenic,” she says.

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She points out that Mono Lake arsenic life, if found, may only go as far as proving the extreme adaptability of life on Earth billions of years ago. It is generally agreed that on early Earth the chemical soup was very different because of the material being thrown out of the planet’s depths by volcanoes and hydrothermal vents and the lack of biologically derived oxygen. If arsenic was around in far greater concentrations then, perhaps “arsenolife”, as she calls it, in Mono Lake is evidence of that ancestral life, a finding that would deepen our understanding of how life on Earth got started.

But she hopes that her research may help scientists to reconsider what alien or “weird” life might look like: “It may prove that there are other possibilities that are beyond our imagination. It opens the door for us to think about biology in ways we have never thought. We are going to look for life on other planets and we only know to look for that which we know. This may help us to develop tools to look for something we have never seen."

[one...two...tree 2,762]

More:

Mono Lake, a basin with no outlet, has built up over many millennia one of the highest natural concentrations of arsenic on Earth. Dr Wolfe-Simon is investigating whether, in the mud around the lake or in the water, there exist microbes whose biological make-up is so fundamentally different from that of any known life on Earth that it may provide proof of a shadow biosphere, a second genesis for life on this planet.

Arsenic is chemically close to phosphorus. While phosphorus is a primary building block of life on Earth — an essential component of DNA and ATP, the energy molecule — arsenic is a deadly poison. In Mono Lake there are micro-organisms that live with arsenic. But they don't incorporate it into their biology.

Dr Wolfe-Simon has theorised that there may be life that chose an "evolutionary pathway" to utilise arsenic. If such microbes existed, it could suggest that life started on our planet not once but at least twice. In turn this would help to support the idea that life is much more likely to have started elsewhere in the galaxy.

"There is life 'as we know it' and there is life 'as we don't know it'. What would that look like? I am trying to give us a framework to work with to help us look for what 'we don't know', the particular framework of arsenic," she says.

...

She points out that Mono Lake arsenic life, if found, may only go as far as proving the extreme adaptability of life on Earth billions of years ago. It is generally agreed that on early Earth the chemical soup was very different because of the material being thrown out of the planet's depths by volcanoes and hydrothermal vents and the lack of biologically derived oxygen. If arsenic was around in far greater concentrations then, perhaps "arsenolife", as she calls it, in Mono Lake is evidence of that ancestral life, a finding that would deepen our understanding of how life on Earth got started.

But she hopes that her research may help scientists to reconsider what alien or "weird" life might look like: "It may prove that there are other possibilities that are beyond our imagination. It opens the door for us to think about biology in ways we have never thought. We are going to look for life on other planets and we only know to look for that which we know. This may help us to develop tools to look for something we have never seen."

The science fiction writers were not far off with their imaginations.

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The science fiction writers were not far off with their imaginations.

I never heard the word 'arsenic' in Star Trek.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I never heard the word 'arsenic' in Star Trek.

*deep sigh* Episode 36, Star Trek Voyager: Star Date - 25.34 "We've encountered some viscous substance that seems to have some form of intelligence and it's killing our crew. Preparing a landing crew to beam down to the planet."

Take that, you Klingon #######.

[SuperDuper! 230]

NASA needs to justify its existence. Or face huge budget cuts. No surprise its grasping at ways to make big headlines....

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NASA needs to justify its existence. Or face huge budget cuts. No surprise its grasping at ways to make big headlines....

Do you believe they'd make up something this big? Because this is big. It shatters a fundamental assumption in the biological sciences.

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And given how freakin' weird Californians are, is it any surprise that weird non carbon based life forms would also be found in... California?

I mean, really. If not California, then where?

[SuperDuper! 230]

Only you , AJ could make up something bigger.

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Only you , AJ could make up something bigger.

But, seriously. Isn't this too big to just 'make up'? There are scientists outside of NASA and everyone will be chomping at the bit to prove NASA wrong here.

[scandal 951]

Do you believe they'd make up something this big? Because this is big. It shatters a fundamental assumption in the biological sciences.

I'm sure it's real research, and it is interesting and new and novel. But it's not as unique as you are making out. The concepts of independently spawned and evolved life here on Earth as well as elsewhere is quite well accepted. There are organisms that cluster on the ocean bed sea vents which have radically different chemistry from anything else on Earth, and which tolerate hydrogen sulfide as no other life can, and whose energy source is not and has never been solar, but rather radiant sea vent heat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent

Hydrothermal vent communities are able to sustain such vast amounts of life because vent organisms depend on chemosynthetic bacteria for food. The water that comes out of the hydrothermal vent is rich in dissolved minerals and supports a large population of chemo-autotrophic bacteria. These bacteria use sulfur compounds, particularly hydrogen sulfide, a chemical highly toxic to most known organisms, to produce organic material through the process of chemosynthesis.

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I'm sure it's real research, and it is interesting and new and novel. But it's not as unique as you are making out. The concepts of independently spawned and evolved life here on Earth as well as elsewhere is quite well accepted. There are organisms that cluster on the ocean bed sea vents which have radically different chemistry from anything else on Earth, and which tolerate hydrogen sulfide as no other life can, and whose energy source is not and has never been solar, but rather radiant sea vent heat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent

Interesting. I guess we'll see what NASA has to say tomorrow. I have no doubt they will accurately present their findings.

[SuperDuper! 230]

Interesting. I guess we'll see what NASA has to say tomorrow. I have no doubt they will accurately present their findings.

You are expecting WAY too much from this agency called NASA.

[luckytxn 2,263]

Come on now. Unless they have somehow captured a alien on a video feed walking around then anything they say that there is possible life out there and it may not be carbon based is not worth freaking over. Even if they did have a video feed of a life form is it worthwhile to spend a trillion dollars to send a earth person to go look up close and personal?