Friday, December 3, 2010

Arsenic Based Life

Apparently scientists have found some.

Up to this point we believed all living matter was carbon based. Clearly, we were wrong. How cool are these little buggers? No longer will the cockroaches be the only ones surviving the nuclear holocaust. I betcha the little microbes will be chugging right along with them, perhaps one day becoming the primary life forms of the planet.

I wonder if these are the basis for the creatures that will eventually replace us.

Okay, I'm getting away from myself.

However, this discovery leads to so many more questions, just as all good science does. A good answer makes you ask more questions. Anyway. I digress.

Getting down to the nitty gritty of the report I googled it. I immediately found this article.

Basically the guy explains that the organisms aren't entirely based on arsenic. They are still totally carbon based, require oxygen, nitrogen, and some other basic stuff. However, they can be coaxed into substituting arsenic for phosphorous. Still really cool, but not quite as ZOMG THIS IS SO AWESOME as people have been getting hyped about.

There's definitely some really neat science going on here that should be explored further, but let's not get all excited about the new life form.

1 comment:

  1. Well there is an issue with this now. Some of the premier scientist in the fields dealing with these potential kinds of life forms are pointing out the flaws in NASA's research.

    So from what they're saying, NASA fudged the whole thing to get attention.

    I'm hoping that they're wrong, but we wont know until these other scientist get their hands on this life form themselves.

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