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curiousuburb
Antimatter Man
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
 
2010-12-01, 20:02

Quote:
Originally Posted by crazychester View Post
I really just came by to see if the 'burb had anything to say about NASA's upcoming announcement re: extraterrestrial life. But hey, fuck the aliens.
Now, now, crazychester... before we fuck the aliens, we'd like to know more about them... and maybe buy them dinner first... if Arsenic-based life has dinner.

But I'll try to oblige with a heads-up on tomorrow's announcement.

It's life, Jim... but not as we know it.

*waves hand*

NASA to announce new astrobiology odds based on discovery of new 'alien' life forms in arsenic pools on Earth

NASA TV has a press conference to discuss the possible 'second genesis' scheduled for 1900 GMT Dec 2nd

Quote:
Originally Posted by NASA

NASA Sets News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery; Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 2 p.m. EST On Dec. 2

WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.

The news conference will be held at the NASA Headquarters auditorium at 300 E St. SW, in Washington. It will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency's website at http://www.nasa.gov.

Participants are:
- Mary Voytek, director, Astrobiology Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington
- Felisa Wolfe-Simon, NASA astrobiology research fellow, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, Calif.
- Pamela Conrad, astrobiologist, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
- Steven Benner, distinguished fellow, Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, Gainesville, Fla.
- James Elser, professor, Arizona State University, Tempe

For NASA TV streaming video and downlink information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

---

For more information about NASA astrobiology activities, visit:

http://astrobiology.nasa.gov
And although embargoed, some Murdoch media outlets have leaked details about the discoveries at Mono lake...

Sun version

Quote:
Originally Posted by TheSun.co.uk

HOPE of finding ET-style life on other worlds has got a massive boost after scientists discovered microbes in a deadly poisonous ARSENIC lake.

NASA researchers - amazed that anything could thrive in the toxic liquid - will unveil their dramatic conclusions tomorrow.

They say the microbes prove a second form of life started on Earth in environments previously thought too hostile.

It opens up the possibility that Extra Terrestial aliens like the one from the 1982 movie CAN exist in the solar system.

Geobiologist Dr Felisa Wolfe-Simon made the breakthrough discovery during two years probing Mono Lake in California's Yosemite National Park - which has one of the highest natural concentrations of arsenic on Earth.

She will be among NASA-backed experts explaining the findings. Others include ecologist James Elser, who researches the possibility of ET creatures on other planets.

Scientists looking for life on Mars and Saturn's largest moon Titan will also speak.

Basic forms of life found before all rely on phosphorous to exist.

Astrobiologist Dr Lewis Dartnell, of the Centre for Planetary Sciences in London, said yesterday: "This is exciting. If these organisms use arsenic in their metabolism, it demonstrates that there are other forms of life to those we knew of."
And for the Times version with bigger words...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Timesonline.co.uk

Could the Mono Lake arsenic prove there is a shadow biosphere?

Do alien life forms exist in a Californian lake? Could there be a shadow biosphere? One scientist is trying to find out
Mike Harvey

Mono Lake has a bizarre, extraterrestrial beauty. Just east of Yosemite National Park in California, the ancient lake covers about 65 square miles. Above its surface rise the twisted shapes of tufa, formed when freshwater springs bubble up through the alkaline waters.

Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a geobiologist, is interested in the lake not for its scenery but because it may be harbouring alien life forms, or “weird life”. Mono Lake, a basin with no outlet, has built up over many millennia one of the highest natural concentrations of arsenic on Earth. Dr Wolfe-Simon is investigating whether, in the mud around the lake or in the water, there exist microbes whose biological make-up is so fundamentally different from that of any known life on Earth that it may provide proof of a shadow biosphere, a second genesis for life on this planet.

Arsenic is chemically close to phosphorus. While phosphorus is a primary building block of life on Earth — an essential component of DNA and ATP, the energy molecule — arsenic is a deadly poison. In Mono Lake there are micro-organisms that live with arsenic. But they don’t incorporate it into their biology.

Dr Wolfe-Simon has theorised that there may be life that chose an “evolutionary pathway” to utilise arsenic. If such microbes existed, it could suggest that life started on our planet not once but at least twice. In turn this would help to support the idea that life is much more likely to have started elsewhere in the galaxy.

“There is life ‘as we know it’ and there is life ‘as we don’t know it’. What would that look like? I am trying to give us a framework to work with to help us look for what ‘we don’t know’, the particular framework of arsenic,” she says.

Dr Wolfe-Simon has taken samples from the mud and the waters of the lake and is performing a series of multiple dilutions — hugely increasing the levels of arsenic and reducing residual phosphorous to zero. She adds sugar, vitamins and other nutrients to encourage organisms to grow and tests the results.

Her experiments are not yet over but she is quietly pleased with the progress she is making. “We have some very exciting data,” she says. The results should be published by the end of this year.

She points out that Mono Lake arsenic life, if found, may only go as far as proving the extreme adaptability of life on Earth billions of years ago. It is generally agreed that on early Earth the chemical soup was very different because of the material being thrown out of the planet’s depths by volcanoes and hydrothermal vents and the lack of biologically derived oxygen. If arsenic was around in far greater concentrations then, perhaps “arsenolife”, as she calls it, in Mono Lake is evidence of that ancestral life, a finding that would deepen our understanding of how life on Earth got started.

But she hopes that her research may help scientists to reconsider what alien or “weird” life might look like: “It may prove that there are other possibilities that are beyond our imagination. It opens the door for us to think about biology in ways we have never thought. We are going to look for life on other planets and we only know to look for that which we know. This may help us to develop tools to look for something we have never seen.”

Her work is funded by the Nasa Astrobiology Institute and she is based at the laboratories of Professor Ron Oremland, of the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. Does she believe that there are alien life forms out there? “I don’t know how there could not be extraterrestrial life,” she replies.
I'll be watching NASA TV online to see and hear more.
And I'll be humming The Firm tune all day.

Exciting stuff.

All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand.
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