New Life Form Discovered By NASA!

[Revoltingest]

NASA Finds New Life Form | Wired Science | Wired.com

Research is needed....is it Democrat, Republican or (hopefully) Libertarian?

 

[Revoltingest]

Beat you to it, Skwim!

 

[Skwim]

Beat you to it, Skwim!

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Actually, I apologize for re-posting the news. I didn't see your OP.

 

[Revoltingest]

No worries!

 

[Amill]

I figured it'd be some sort of discovery about bacteria in extreme environments, pretty much from looking at the careers of the people speaking at the conference. Not sure why they had to hype up the press conference as much as they did though. But still cool.

 

[Revoltingest]

I figured it'd be some sort of discovery about bacteria in extreme environments, pretty much from looking at the careers of the people speaking at the conference. Not sure why they had to hype up the press conference as much as they did though. But still cool.

An arsenic based life form? Hypeworthy!

 

[Amill]

An arsenic based life form? Hypeworthy!

Yea you're probably right
The only thing I need clarification on was did they actually find the life form with it already using arsenic? Or did they place the bacteria in the lake and it became able to use arsenic?

The bacterium -- strain GFAJ-1 of the Halomonadaceae family of Gammaproteobacteria -- was scooped from sediment in California's Mono Lake, an area rife with high levels of naturally occurring arsenic, it said.
Scientists were able to grow the microbes from the lake with only small portions of phosphorous -- considered an essential nutrient in the biomolecules of naturally occurring bacteria.

The cnn article sounds like they tried to grow the microbes in the lake and the organisms became able to use arsenic instead of phosphorous since the levels were so low. I think the ability to substitute chemicals in cases like this is the most impressive part, not just the fact that it is different from life as we know it.