The Glade 4.0

Courtesy of Lenas on Twitter:

Word is, NASA found new life: http://gizmo.do/i6xgtF

_________________
"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

I thought it was pretty exciting

Damn straight!

_________________
"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

I'm not sure what this has to do with National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I was hoping they found life on another planet.

Do you not understand how this could impact our search for life on other planets?

Is there an organization that should be more concerned with this discovery than NASA?

In a word? No.




How do we know that this isn't just some sort of adaptation/mutation?

_________________
"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

The point is that what we thought were the six essential building blocks of life are not what they seemed.

What else might we be wrong about? How else can life form? How should we change our criteria of an "inhabitable" planet?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... forms.html

Correct, now they are instead "the six essential building blocks of multi-cellular life". And this new life form might not even have cells, I don't think they disclosed it.

Bacteria by definition is single-cell. Life has to start somewhere though, Lex. If you believe in evolution, who can say that these arsenic bacteria might not join our ranks in a few million years?

Hmmmm....how would one get rid of a bacterial infection that spawned from some of these bad boys altered in a lab somewhere?
Hahaha, the article read like the beginning of a horror novel where the ending is that the entire planet is wiped out in less than a month or something after the discovery of this bacteria.

I'm definitely interested to know more. Is this all the have so far? Its such a tease.

_________________
"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/scien ... .html?_r=1



So basically, we were able to engineer new life from existing life. That's very cool, but still a little disappointing.

Interesting, not hugely surprising.

Arsenic and Phosphorus have very similar properties. Very similar size, reactivity, etc. Heck, you can even swap out P for As in molecular phosphorous (P4, white phosphorous) and then use it as a building block for almost any phosphorous compound we know of, with As substituting in 1/4th of the time.

Biochemists already routinely use heavy atom swaps in DNA as labeling, we know the structures still work. It's not that far of a leap to assume that in an environment with one atom over another, the more abundant atom becomes predominant over time.

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

"uses the poisonous arsenic for its building blocks"

So, given enough time to evolve.....







Actually, I do find it interesting and exciting. Scientists have speculated about life forms that could exist in environments that would be toxic to any carbon-based life form (you should see some of the ideas they had for theoretical life on Jupiter), but this certainly proves that life can exist beyond what we thought was possible.

_________________
Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Only if it came from a carbon-based form originally.

And is still a carbon based life-form.

This is really no different than the numerous bacteria that survive on Sulfur instead of Oxygen.

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Changing the molecular makeup of an organism and having it survive is a little different than said organism being able to process/convert nutrients.

Not really.

Bacteria that "survive" off of Sulfur also incorporate it into their chemical makeup as other bacteria would incorporate oxygen.

Nitrogenous bacteria make use of a different molecular makeup as well.

That said, As and P are probably two of the only elements that are so alike that one can be swapped for the other with next to no changes in the overall structure and reactivity of the molecule that contains them.

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Is this because they're in the same group and have a reasonably close e-negativity to each other?

And unrelated to my question:

_________________
The Dude abides.

still holding out for silicon based life

I think these have a life of their own:

_________________
"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

thats Silicone lol

And the same size, same normal bonding patterns (due to the same valence shell composition *number not row*), and the same normal native allotrope formations.

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Oh yeah. Heh. My bad.

_________________
"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

_________________
Hokanu
Duty is a magnificent blessing because it is the sign of trust from the universe.
END OF LINE.

People are now starting to say their experiments really sucked and they don't really prove anything.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/09/nasa ... based-det/

_________________
The Dude abides.