The NASA Announcement: A New Form of Life? Maybe!
After several days of hoo-ha brought on by a vague NASA press release about mysterious life forms that will change how we see alien life, the story finally was published in Science and announced by NASA and so, okay, I'll bite. It turns out that a geomicrobiologist found a bacterium in a California lake full of arsenic, and the bacterium was full of arsenic too. The arsenic atoms were being used by the bug in place of phosphate atoms; and if you'd paid attention back when you were supposed to, you'd know that phosphate atoms are crucial to 1) DNA which is the molecule that makes up genes; and 2) ATP which is the molecule that provides cells' energy. So: genes and energy, about as basic as you'd want to get.
NASA says life forms based on arsenic are so biochemically different from every other life form on earth that maybe they could exist on other planets. Biochemists say sure, of course, but first let's find out whether those bugs are actually using the arsenic and not just co-existing with it since they live in an arsenic-filled lake.
Apparently the bugs still like their phosphates and New York Times quotes a kindly biochemist saying they were clinging to every last phosphate "and really living on the edge.” He said he felt sorry for them.
The last time NASA discovered extraterrestrial life, it was bacteria in a meteorite that had come from Mars; and months later, with no press releases, the bacteria turn out to be contamination from the site where the meteorite was found.
Never mind, the arsenical bug is at least another interesting extremophile. For the time being I'm going to grant NASA this one.
Ann Finkbeiner is the coproprietor of The Last Word on Nothing.
"We haven't really been going into space lately," said one NASA scientist. "We mostly just hang out at this lake."
Of course, Gizmodo is saying that this "changes everything," because the bacteria "[don't] share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth." Surprise! Irresponsible science reporting from a major outlet that gets paid per unit hype!
"We found life in California!"
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
- Monty Python, Galaxy Song
The bacterial flagellum appears to consist of scavenged lace. Weird.
I JUST GO THIS, LOLING
I HAVEN'T GOT IT YET.
Wait. Maybe I did.
In this case, I can't fault the overreportage toooo much, because I worked in an extremophile/astrobiology lab in college & it is just so fun to say "yeah, this is a, you know, a model for how shits could fly around in deep space on asteroids without dying. No big deal."
This is super cool. My college biochem department had a speaker in about Mono Lake, and the "breathing" arsenic that the article talks about is a whole arsenic cycle, just like the carbon cycle in plants/animals, only it's arsenic in different reduction states. That the cycle is this intense is straight-up awesome.
I want a refund. All week I'm thinking, LIFE FOUND ON A MOON OF SATURN!!!! Now it turns out they force-fed this little bastard Californian bacterium some arsenic and it managed to survive?
But I loved this quote: "It's like if you or I morphed into fully functioning cyborgs after being thrown into a room of electronic scrap with nothing to eat," … said a scientist who had nothing to do with the research, but does have a flare for language!
I want to talk to Ursula K. LeGuin, pronto.
ALSO need to talk to Ziggy Stardust.
This explains something even more astonishing – why you never see anyone swimming in Mono Lake.
Shoot I've swum in Mono Lake. If by "swimming in Mono Lake" you mean making out with a slutty person.
I bet if you mated one of those things with the crazy mutant bacteria at the bottom of the Gowanus Canal you would get something approximating an actual alien.
I always wondered why so many mutants and parasites flocked towards Arsenal.
As a Republican I would like to know what the commercial uses for these new creatures are. Could we use them to produce arsenic, clean up arsenic or perhaps even burn them for fuel?