NASA Finds New Life (This Afternoon)

While the official 2pm conference should have more answers, most of the internet has decided that NASA has discovered a completely new life form based on arsenic instead of the more traditional organic materials. We'll know more in a few hours.

Comments

It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[eldavojohn]

Mono Lake was mentioned back in 2009 and in March as potentially harboring this 'shadow biosphere.' Felisa Wolfe-Simon, the geobiologist credited with this (Iron Lisa = Felisa, get it?) led me to an interesting PDF that begins:

If you were asked to speculate about the form extra-terrestrial life on Mars might take, which geomicrobial phenomenon might you select as a model system, assuming that life on Mars would be 'primitive'? Give your reasons.

At the end of my senior year at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1968, I took Professor Ehrlich’s final for his Geomicrobiology course. The above question beckoned to me like the Sirens to Odysseus, for if I answered, it would take so much time and thought that I would never get around to the exam’s other essay questions and consequently, would be "shipwrecked" by flunking the course. So, I passed it up.With this 41-year perspective in mind, this manuscript is now submitted to Professor Ehrlich for (belated) "extra-credit." R.S. Oremland

This has been an interesting topic in sci-fi, I recall an X-Files that revolved around silicon based life.

I certainly hope that we get more details than this teaser (all other news articles seem to point back to Gizmodo). From the sound of this leak I can't tell if the DNA itself is foreign or if it's made of the same Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine with similar hydrogen bonds or if the DNA is similar but different in functionality or if it doesn't create proteins and RNA the same way or if phosphorus component is just switched with arsenic (two very similar elements prebiotic chemically) or if the whole bacteria is made of arsenic. At what point in the chain of DNA to organism does this thing seriously differ? The Gizmodo article is painfully weak on detail.

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[Halo1]

According to an article by the official Flemish news service, the beans were already spilled this afternoon in a documentary shown by a Dutch broadcast service (VPRO) on this topic. It's indeed about Mono lake and Felisa Wolfe-Simon. The article also contains a small film fragment in which they confirms that it's indeed about a life form that uses arsenic instead of phosphor (it also contains some sound bytes from the researcher, in English).

Re:It's the Shadow Biosphere Lake

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Hey, just wanted to weigh in before you ruin your own vacation this spring. I grew up in Tuolumne County, California, just west of the Mono Lake area (in fact, we have a few historical sites dedicated to Mark Twain in that area). The foothills of the Sierra Nevada were my playground and Yosemite is nothing more than a tourist trap to us locals. If you are going to head up to Mono Lake or the nearby Bridgeport Reservoir or Grant Lake for vacation, don't go in the spring. The snowpack will last well into May and you will freeze your tucus off if you decide to go swimming in any of those mountain lakes that early (essentially you would just be swimming in melted snow...and it really is frackin' cold). If you really want to check out that location, especially for lake activities, I suggest waiting until very late July or, even better August. The drive up there will be hot as all balls, but the lakes will be much more temperate and kind to splash around in.

Just do us a favor and be careful with your campfires and such that time of year. A lot of us get tired of having half our damn county burn down every summer because of tourists being careless with cigarette butts and such. Dry grass burns fast. Just remember that and you should have a dandy vacation. Enjoy the Sierra Nevada when you get here. =)

Re:Just wondering....

[Mindcontrolled]

Is carbon a deadly posion for an arsenic-based life form?

Such an arsenic-"based" life form would still be made up mostly of carbon, the arsenic would replace phosphor instead. So, carbon would be most likely harmless to them while phosphor might indeed be toxic, in a reversal of the toxicity mechanism of arsenic, which works, among other mechanisms, by replacing the phosphate groups in adenosine triphosphate.

The really interesting question is how an arsenic-based bacterium would avoid the effect of arsenic binding to sulfhydryl groups in proteins.