http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/astrobiology_toxic_chemical.html
QuoteResearchers conducting tests in the harsh environment of Mono Lake in California have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in its cell components.
.....
"We know that some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we've found is a microbe doing something new -- building parts of itself out of arsenic," said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA Astrobiology Research Fellow in residence at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., and the research team's lead scientist. "If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven't seen yet?"
Makes you wonder what else is out there waiting to be learned.
I always assumed life could adapt to whatever was out there. Which is why I never understood why, when looking for other planets that could support life forms, scientists always looked for systems that had water and certain temperature ranges.
This "new" finding doesn't surprise me at all. What surprises me is that it is "new" to scientists.
grnidone, I have always had the same thoughts - it always killed me that they narrowed the searches to earth like planets
well, you can only search for something you will recognise when you find it.... if there's a lifeform which doesn't move, respire or shit it's probably sitting on the bottom of someones shoe right now and we haven't even realised......
The "Earth-like" planets thing does make perfect sense, in fact. For life to arise, it is almost certain that the presence of free water is required. The fact that life appears to be subsequently capable of evolving to deal with incredibly harsh environments has no bearing at all on that, since the first life form on a given planet, by definition, has made zero evolutuinary progress.
And please, no-one say anything about "silicon based life". No. Just no
SILICON BASED LIFE!!!
Sorry. *ahem*
Quote from: grnidone on December 06, 2010, 07:52:09 PM
This "new" finding doesn't surprise me at all. What surprises me is that it is "new" to scientists.
Honestly, neither surprises me. Humans are wired to deal with the familiar, and it's really uncommon for even someone in an 'exploratory' profession to ever
really look past the expected.