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California Lake's Arsenic Hints At a Shadow Biosphere
MichaelSmith writes "Scientists think that there might be arsenic-based life in Mono Lake, California. If it's shown to exist, such life could have evolved independently from our own, or it could have forked from ours at a very early stage."
Arsenic life forms = Super rats (resistant to rat poison). Oh boy!
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Any organism with an Adenosine triarsenate based energy transport structure would be a serious badass.
Arsenic and Phosphorus are quite similar, chemically; but I'm not nearly chemist enough to know if there are messy details preventing a suitably evolved biological system from substituting one for the other.
Though, this being the internet, I'm obliged to note that Chuck Norris already does.
Can we eat them and are they tasty?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
This Monolake?
-mkb
The highly intelligent life would find it bizarre that some organisms would actually thrive in an atmosphere with such a dangerous and corrosive gas like oxygen.
Scientists suspect the new life forms communicate via something called "S L A S H D O T"
Did Nature Also Choose Arsenic?
I had just read about this possibility today in this book, a fascinating compendium of mini-essays by leading thinkers about scientific or social developments that may be around the corner. Existing tests for biological organisms are geared towards a working asssumption that life forms will be part of the basic, familiar biological tree that we are based on. A "shadow biosphere" was discussed as something that could potentially be an alternative hierarchy of life, so unfamiliar that we haven't understood how to look for it even though it could be relatively populous in certain niche areas of the earth.
Finding an alternative pathway to the evolution of complex life forms could affect our perception of how common life is in the universe and could be a stunning treasure trove of discovery and insight for biologists.
Why should this merit our attention? All she does is speculate about it. I just read the paper she wrote about it in January of last year, and that was almost pure speculation too.
Tell you what: call us back when there is something to actually show us in this area. So far there is next to nothing but somebody's wild idea.
In the meantime, I have a theory of my own: all dinosaurs were thin at one end, much much thicker in the middle, then thin again at the other end.
Can I get a research grant please?
Don't you hate when someone forks a project and then forgets about it, leaving an odd little version buried in an obscure corner?
Really sounds like they're home brewing from the lake water. Yummy.
Did they change the license on carbon-based life forms a couple billion years ago?
There's zero evidence it's pure speculation. Also there's nothing saying a traditional life form can't adapt to arsenic. Unless it has a radically different biology it's likely just adapted to the environment. Other lifeforms here have adapted to use toxic agents. Silicone based life would be alien but simply using arsenic doesn't mean alien. One massive problem is the age of the lake. It would have had to have evolved in relatively recent times. It's kind of the Loch Ness Monster problem, it's just not that old. If it lacks DNA or has some other form than a double helix then they may have something but if it has traditional DNA odds are it's a local boy and just adapted.
Goes and hide under a unixified rock now ...
I'll wait to read the paper to see what the findings are, but I'm not casting a doubt that it's a possibility that life could incorporate arsenic or phosphorus. There are bacteria out there that reduce nitrogen and sulfur for energy, Life is pretty resilient when it comes down to it, and will find a way to exist.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Your slashdot.
Says the guy with a uid above 1.4m.
Arsenic? Mono? Shadow? Fork? Somebody has a sick sense of humor.
Table-ized A.I.
God: let there be man!
Secretary: god, R&D's on the other line, they're saying they made a new breakthrough.
God: what kind of breakthrough?
Secretary: apparently, phosphorus is better than arsenic and it's less polluting. They're saying that the efficiency of ATP alone is worth the transition.
God: medamnit, why didn't they get this to me sooner, I just finished breathing life into this guy. Now what am I supposed to do with poor Adamus?
Secretary: well, our lawyers did some digging and found that the name infringes on some obscure company that caught wind of the project and are already demanding royalties. That, and the EPA is starting to regulate arsenic more vigorously.
God: *sigh* time to make some cutbacks *pumps shotgun*
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There is Arsenic in a lake, in California, that might support a unique form of life.
To me, the most surprising thing is that California has not already declared it a disaster zone and spent $45 million trying to "clean" it up.
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
MEOOOWW, HISS!!!!
I meant to check the anonymous box so I could pretend to be a surly neckbearded oldfag. Also, how did I get modded redundant?
The stories and info posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only fools would take it as fact.
That would be the coolest thing biologists ever discovered. Way cooler than the Sulfur-based life forms in the deep sea.
-- Cheers!
She's being a scientist of the most famous type - she's calling the play before hand. She's putting her reputation on the line, making a prediction, describing a means to test it, and then going to check it herself. She's arguing in the oldest of sense that her insight is right, and in doing so if she gets the job done and is actually right, she's going to be pretty darned famous.
This is far removed from a scientist making a droll statement based on a computer model. She's saying, there is another radically different kind of life on earth and that she is going to show us how to find it. It's worlds beyond cool. She's trying to be like Babe Ruth calling the home run before he does it, and the world just loves that sort of a thing. In a world where people live around the edges and fritter away at them, she's trying to kick open an entirely door. She gets it, and in a very intuitive and natural way, what a scientist is supposed to be - a leader, because their education gives them intuition born out by test, that shows us how to see new things. Life in a dead lake, alien to our own, how much more of a prediction do you need?
This is my sig.
And we expect life on other planets to require oxygen, water, and carbon... when we don’t even know what life is here on earth...
According to Wikipedia, there are titan breathers, and even uranium breathers, who thrive in hot sulfuric acid.
So I fear that we will not even look at where we would find the first life. Or dismiss it as impossible to live.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Am I the only one who reads "blogosphere" every time he sees biosphere?
Are there arsenic-based bloggers out there talking about politics and trading arsenic-based biscotti recipes?
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
"ARSEnic based life form" has so much potential for /. humour,where is it?
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
You must be new here.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
... but you can live there with a proper M$ license.
(do we really want to live there?)
Yeah, the basic building blocks of so-called "heavy life" are Silicon, Lithium, Sulfur, Phosphorus, Arsenic, and Selenium. Everything is one row further down the table. So they use Si6Li12S6 as their primary fuel, breathe in S2, drink lithium sulfide, and exhale silicon sulfide, and need Strontium for healthy bones.
I'll leave calculating their theoretical room-temperature "comfort range" as an exercise for the aspiring sci-fi writer.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Did anyone else click on this thinking it was a story about a "shadow BIOS"? I thought that "California Lake" must be some sort of software company and "Arsenic" was the name of the program they developed to detect a "shadow BIOS".
You've gotta be kidding.
It's described as "arsenolife" in the article.
Based on the number of Friday night posts on this article, "arse-no-life" is most applicable to Slashdot.
posting in epic thread!
From Terry Bisson - I think this short story sums it up nicely
http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html
"I thought you just told me they used radio."
"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"
----------
You will love the ending.
arsenic can substitute phosphorous, but you still need carbon atoms in order to have long carbon chains that builds up proteins, fats, and so on.
Here's an interesting, if short, discussion on various ways life on Earth could have been structured.
"Dr Wolfe-Simon has taken samples from the mud and the waters of the lake and is performing a series of multiple dilutions — hugely increasing the levels of arsenic and reducing residual phosphorous to zero." [emphasis mine]
Shouldn't that read "greatly reducing"?
I'm not usually a linguistic pedant, lest I find myself hoist by my own pedantetry, but reading that sentence almost made my brain segfault: wait: diluting, causing an increase in something, toward zero? Arghhhh!
In Liberty, Rene
I thought people on ./ were supposed to be bashing Microsoft. Am I the only one to make the connection with the .NET team @ MS and the secretly dumping, under the cover of darkness, of large amounts of arsenic in MONO Lake?