NASA news conference: Thursday. See link. It's all about ET!

vibe666

from my (admittedly basic) understanding of all this, it would be physically impossible for this lifeform to have evolved from any other form of life on this planet, given that it's basic structure are totally incompatible with the other life on earth.

if this is indeed the case, then it is possibly either of alien origin (ala meteorite strike at some stage in the past) or has evolved totally separately from other life on the planet, which would seem to be somewhat unlikely unless there are many different types of these organisms coexisting in the lake who could have a common genesis that began within the lake.

maybe there's something else that i'm missing, but it's pretty epic nonetheless and it looks like the boy who cried wolf finally got his wolf!

Beeker

My reading of this is that life started many times on the early Earth. One stream led to all the life we know another led to these new chaps and all the rest died out or maybe some are still to be found.

Cú Giobach

vibe666 wrote: »

if this is indeed the case, then it is possibly either of alien origin (ala meteorite strike at some stage in the past) or has evolved totally separately from other life on the planet, which would seem to be somewhat unlikely unless there are many different types of these organisms coexisting in the lake who could have a common genesis that began within the lake.

That is exactly what they were looking for, the so called "shadow biosphere".

Felisa Wolfe-Simon has been looking for this for quite a while, seems she hit the jackpot.

sponsoredwalk

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

It's just a screensaver thing at the moment but says 2pm which I assume is
in 1 minute over there & hopefully not 31 minutes or 61 minutes

vibe666

ah, its not nearly that good.

its a regular microbe that was able to survive when substituting phosphorus for arsenic.

its not all arsenic, its still got some phosphorus just with some amount of arsenic as well.

Cú Giobach

vibe666 wrote: »

ah, its not nearly that good.

its a regular microbe that was able to survive when substituting phosphorus for arsenic.

I don't think a microbe using arsenic instead of phosphorus could be called "regular". Well not yet any way .

sponsoredwalk

The fact that life forms are able to substitute fundamental building blocks
for those which previously were not considered possible is pretty damn
important & alters all current views about the uniformity in the components
making up life unless I'm mistaken. Remember DNA is molecularly uniform in
all species yet here we have evidence of different chemical composure so if
something so fundamental can be altered still producing life who knows how
extreme the variations could become in more complex species & who knows
what extra-terrestrial environments would be more inviting to the production
of arsenic to that of phosphorous? Am I understanding all this right or
missing something?

Wibbs

Yea its a great discovery but its not new life from my reading of it. Its only "new" life if its not using DNA, otherwise its just a variation on the same theme, albeit a novel one. It evolved from other life forms already extant. Indeed from a pretty common group of bacteria. So as far as I can see it's not even close to new life or an "alien" bacteria or a shadow biosphere with a separate evolutionary pathway from all the rest. Like vibe666 said it still uses DNA, just evolved to replace phosporous with aresnic. It was able to survive in a novel but not madly unexpected way. Just another extremophile. Still an impressive little bugger mind. Another meh moment from NASA IMHO.

It doesnt automatically mean that an "arsenic planet" will give rise to life either. OK they can survive the substitution, but could they evolve in the first place in the absence of phosporous?

In any case I wouldnt be looking for such a biosphere in a lake only a couple of million years old. I'd be looking for somewhere more ancient out of sight and stable. Couple of miles down in the crust for example.

vibe666

the more i think about it, the more i think that the 'leak' was just a stunt by nasa make people think it was something extra terrestrial or a completely new form of life without regular DNA. the way it was being described in the leak was as if they'd found something with no common ancestry with the rest of life on the planet.

it was just a stunt to drum up interest in the actual announcement because at the end of the day they knew it would just be another in a long line of 'meh' moments.

syklops

^^ +1.

And now I look stupid, suggesting it could be extra-terrestrial.

Whoever manages NASA's PR should be shot.

vibe666

syklops wrote: »

^^ +1.

And now I look stupid, suggesting it could be extra-terrestrial.

Whoever manages NASA's PR should be shot.

i did the same thing mate, i wouldn't worry about it. it's what they wanted everyone to think so they could get as much publicity as possible for their announcement.