I thought this was pretty awesome:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/nasa-finds-arsenic-life-form/

Discuss its bad-assery.

I'm still waiting until we have silicone-based life forms, so Transformers can be real.

Yeah, heard about it.

It's interesting, but I don't think it's THAT amazing. We pretty much knew that life can exist differently, and what we found here is nevertheless so basic that I didn't pay it much attention.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 3 2010, 4:33 am by Centreri.

I never knew transformers were made out of botched boob jobs and old cookware.

Cent - The fact is that it's very conflicting with most modern views, those of the idea that only phosphorous and sugar can be used as the helix backbone. It just kind of throws off balance all methods of assessing another planet's ability to host life.

I don't think this is all that incredible. The reason all life on this planet has the same chemical makeup is because they all arose from the same original ancestor. Since our biochemistry works, there was no evolutionary incentive to change it. So if life were to arise on another planet, it would use the biochemistry that worked for it. There was no reason to assume it would work the same way as ours. It (assuming it exists) may not even use DNA, or at least what we know as DNA. We simply assumed that extraterrestrial life would reflect ours because our life was all the we've observed. And why is that? Because life rose once on this planet. This is still a significant discovery, but not for the reasons everyone is reporting it as.

Also, all the headlines claiming we found aliens infuriates me. You don't have to be a PhD to understand why.

But do they survive in cyanide?

Did you even read the article? They found it in CA.

I know? Have you not seen every other article sensationally claiming that aliens exist?

I didn't read it as it being extra-terrestrial. It might be, but granted most of the elements on the earth are extra-terrestrial. We* wouldn't be here if astral bodies hadn't collided with each other in the first place

edit: it said They, I meant We

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 6 2010, 3:50 am by Fire_Kame.

No it hasn't. Different chemistry != Alien

Especially when NASA announced the press conference but before they held it, there was a lot of hooplah saying they found aliens.

/lick

its a term of endearment

You know I mean, and everyone else means, aliens from space. Some call illegal Mexicans aliens, but we don't mean that the bacteria is from Mexico when we say it is alien.

I was going to crack a joke about how aliens exist, but then I read this post and went

"Aliens" is an overused term - nowadays, it can mean either what Bio quoted or "extra-terrestrial", the latter being the colloquial used by (frankly speaking) stupid people (or people trying to take advantage of stupid people).

Fucking media.

There isn't proof that all life originated from a common ancestor; that's still a theory, and a rather broad one at that. It's probably more accurate to say that "all life with similar biochemistry originate from a common ancestor," although you would still need to be more specific.

Don't a bunch of articles also describe the shadow life 2.0 or something? I.e. life evolved more than once on Earth. Or something like that; I don't remember exactly, but the concept was that different forms of life evolved at different or even in parallel times, separately from one another. Part of the significance of the article is that it shows such a unique biochemistry that it gives evidence to the life 2.0 theory; that maybe there are different origins of life that evolved separately from one another, e.g. one type of bacteria starting an evolutionary chain in thermal vents at the bottom of the ocean, with another growing on the coasts of another continent and spreading another chain of life there.

Why? He and I were operating on different definitions of the same word. A usage error a is logical fallacy. I gave a ridiculous example to demonstrate my point.

The media has to make it sensational - hence we've found a foreign life-form (created silicon based organisms).

It's a pretty boring discovery. And quite mundane also. Hence the sensationalist media spin


Here is the TL; DR version of the article for you people who'd rather argue semantics, than what's in the topic:

• 1. DNA (and therefore, all life as we know it) consists of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur.
  
• 2. Phosphorus is the backbone which holds protein together to form DNA.
  
• 3. Arsenic is beneath Phosphorus in the periodic table (and therefore, very, very similar to Phosphorus)
  
• 4. Scientists took a very basic organism, and replaced its normal food (Phosphorus) with alternative food (Arsenic)
  
• 5. The organism started to use Arsenic instead of Phosphorus in it's DNA.
  

And now the kiddies version:

Charlie the unicorn eats mushroom grass, he loves mushroom grass. He doesn't know what he would do without his mushroom grass. One day, evil Bastard Man steals all the mushroom grass in Idiot Kingdom, and replaces it with Grassy Mushrooms. Charlie soon realises that he will die if he doesn't eat (adapt). Charlie begins eating Grassy Mushrooms and develops a fond liking for them. and then evil Bastard Man went onto staredit.net and stamped his judicial shit-covered boot of justice on this forum.