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Halophile Microbes In Mediterranean Salt Pockets
Gebraucht von Neuwagen writes "This finding adds extremely salty water to the extreme environments where extremophiles can live. The Discovery Basin contains a brine that has the highest concentration of magnesium chloride found thus far in a marine environment; such concentrations are considered anathema to life. The researcher was quoted saying: "This in turn adds to arguments that life could exist outside the Earth""
The news that extremophiles can survive outher space is veery old. The little bugger called Tardigrada is pretty hard to kill :).
I don't want to sound like a moron around a bunch of smart folks but, there are things that can live without air. My question is is there anything that can live ON OUR PLANET in a vacuum. Call me lazy, but i don't feel like research tonight. Inquring mind want's to know! Teach me!
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
I want to know where their energy comes from. not from light probably. Redox on the salts?
Grump who barely passed chem/bio.
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
You are correct in saying that this isn't proof that there is life on other planets. The only proof of life on other planets would be just that, finding life on other planets (or asteroids, moons, coments, nebulae, who know's what will sustain "life" really?)
You are wrong, however, in your conclusion that the first bilogics were "quite fragile and would certainly 'die' in extreme environments."
Just look at the conditions on Earth when life first began. From what we unerstand, compared to the conditions now, life started out in an "Extreme" environment.
stuff
> The first biological, self replicating molecules were probably quite fragile and would certainly "die" in extreme environments
Possibly so, but until we know exactly what those molecules were it's probably best not claim so with certainty. They may have actually required some environment that we would consider extreme.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Extremophiles show us that life can exist outside our realm of what is considered normal. To say that an extremophile is direct evidence that there is life in space is incorrect. The point is, we as a race have believed for so many years that things always have to be just so and every hundred years or so an old way of thinking has to be thrown out.
As for your previous comment, no one can blame you for being ignorant about the sciences behind life and its evolution on earth. There is no doubt that the earth had what would be considered an extreme environment when life began, although there is much contention about the nature of that environment. One thing can be certain it is only those types of high energy dynamic environments that can create the necessary conditions for stable organic molecules to form. Not every place on earth would have been hospitable to life including your hypothetical lakes of acid (that probably didn't exist) but in areas rich in organics and were quite warm, not 30K.
You're right when you said life does require special conditions to begin, but no one had to say that those conditions are rare. Our solar system is so small and plain compared the vastness and diversity of the universe. We don't know how or where or even why life evolves but when we look at extremophiles they show us that life can exist in hostile environments and that life is more diverse and hardy than we previously thought.
Actually Freeman Dyson wrote a very interesting little book called "Origin of Life" which makes the case that the chicken came first -- ie the first cells consisted of bags of amino acid chains that catalyzed their own reproduction in an approximate manner. Cell reproduction happened when a cell split up physically into two cells that both happened to contain all the necessary chains of amino acids. Exact reproduction (via DNA/RNA) is supposed to have happened after this stage.