NASA confirm!s `alien` life is found on Earth

Arsenic-based bacteria

Photo: NASA - Creative Commons

NASA confirm!s "alien" life is found on Earth

December 2nd, 2010 7:42 pm ET

The blogosphere has been teeming with stories of life – alien life! Yes, and there are even the snide remarks that alien life in California has been here for years and can be seen on reality TV shows.

In Mono Lake, California scientists have discovered bacteria that have a major molecular difference from any other life form. NASA made this announcement today. All known life on earth is made from the following: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur.

The newly-discovered bacteria are made from all of the above except the phosphorus. In place of phosphorus the bacteria has arsenic, a deadly poison to life forms.

Gizmodoreports: According to Wolfe Simon, they knew that "some microbes can breathe arsenic,but what we've found is a microbe doing something new—building parts of itself out of arsenic." The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding organisms in other planets that don'thave to be like planet Earth.

The Huffington Postsays: while the discovery is not extraterrestrial life, NASA has indeed uncovered an entirely new life formon our planet that "doesn't share the biological building blocks of anything currently living" on Earth…

Carolyn Castiglia of Strollerderby tells us: The NASA press conference is now over, and scientists have confirm!ed what bloggers had leaked earlier: there is “alien” life forming right here on planet Earth. In a dynamic that might be described in a play on words as “arsenic and old lake.”

NASA may also have discovered arsenic on Jupiter’s moon Titan, and some bloggers are trying to draw the conclusion that there may be life forms or remnants of life forms on other planets.

From there it is no stretch of the imagination that Carolyn tells mom’s to put Wall-E in the DVD player. She muses the children should be prepared. On the serious side some have seen possible uses for the unusual bacteria.

One is to use it to clean up areas contaminated with arsenic, as scientists have put the bacteria in a phosphorous-free medium and the bacteria just uses the arsenic as food.

Source: examiner.com

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