NASA Announces Discovery of New Life Form
NASA has announced the discovery of a microbe that can use arsenic instead of phosphorous to build its DNA. This fundamentally changes how we define life and has profound implications for astrobiology and the search for alien life. It also makes the existence of extraterrestrial life far more likely, because the implication is that our existing ideas about what's required for life to arise are too restrictive.
The discovery was made in Lake Mono in California by a team led by Felisa Wolfe-Simon - a biochemist who I met at the second of the Royal Society's two discussion meetings on extraterrestrial life, entitled Towards a Scientific and Societal Agenda on Extraterrestrial Life (see the two features below for further details).
This discovery opens the door to the possibility of one of science's holy grails: the shadow biosphere. In other words, proof that life arose on Earth not once, but twice. Sometimes dubbed 'Genesis 2', the existence of a shadow biosphere would suggest that life is not some cosmic miracle, but arises easily. The follow-on deduction would be that the Universe is teeming with life. However, the problem with the shadow biosphere theory is determining whether something is Genesis 2, or merely Genesis 1.5 - i.e. an extremophile that's radically different from all other life on Earth, but still evolved from the same 'Universal Common Ancestor'. Felisa and her team are undertaking further research and additional papers are expected. Watch out for further exciting revelations.
Click here to read the NASA press release.
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NASA has announced the discovery of a microbe that can use arsenic instead of phosphorous to build its DNA. This fundamentally changes how we define life and has profound implications for astrobiology and the search for alien life. It also makes the existence of extraterrestrial life far more likely, because the implication is that our existing ideas about what's required for life to arise are too restrictive.
The discovery was made in Lake Mono in California by a team led by Felisa Wolfe-Simon - a biochemist who I met at the second of the Royal Society's two discussion meetings on extraterrestrial life, entitled Towards a Scientific and Societal Agenda on Extraterrestrial Life (see the two features below for further details).
This discovery opens the door to the possibility of one of science's holy grails: the shadow biosphere. In other words, proof that life arose on Earth not once, but twice. Sometimes dubbed 'Genesis 2', the existence of a shadow biosphere would suggest that life is not some cosmic miracle, but arises easily. The follow-on deduction would be that the Universe is teeming with life. However, the problem with the shadow biosphere theory is determining whether something is Genesis 2, or merely Genesis 1.5 - i.e. an extremophile that's radically different from all other life on Earth, but still evolved from the same 'Universal Common Ancestor'. Felisa and her team are undertaking further research and additional papers are expected. Watch out for further exciting revelations.
Click here to read the NASA press release.
NEXT PAGE
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