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."

Comments

This is sheer speculation so far!

[Jane Q. Public]

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?

Re:This is sheer speculation so far!

[Group XVII]

It's well informed speculation. It seems like a methodical approach to developing a research agenda, and indeed we are told actual experiments are being conducted. I don't have any reason to doubt that. Probably more that a few people will find the topic fascinating. I'm sympathetic to your objection but it might be overstated.

Yeah but she's calling the ball

[tjstork]

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?