It's life Jim...

[Dartz]

http://gizmodo.com/5704158/nasa-finds-new-life

Nasa announces the discovery of Arsenic based life. Essentially, Alien life here on Planet Earth.... it's completely different to anything else.

Finding Aliens on Earth, how common are they out in the wide blue yonder?
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Bob Schroeck]

Triple what we might have expected, actually -- I just came across http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z16xADrjOy]a different article that reports the universe holds three times as many suns as we previously thought.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Sofaspud]

They're not aliens.
http://www.popsci.com/sci...tions-alien-life-hunters
Key phrase: "And it is not “new life” — it’s an existing bacteria that scientists
deliberately manipulated in a lab to see what would happen."

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

[Sweno]

I'll second the 'not aliens' bit. They are local microbes that have just widely expanded what we can consider habitable enviroments.

I view this as similar to the work done by Lenski on e.coli bacteria and citrate (perhaps on a smaller time scale).

Does it mean these bacteria landed here on a meteorite? nope.

But it does mean that our definition of "elements needed for life" just got a little wider.

I wouldn't be surprised if scientists find life based on silicon or sulfur.
-Terry
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"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

[Herr Bad Moon]

Life made from poison? Sounds like Mirror Universe aggression!
---
Jon
"And that must have caused my dad's brain to break in half, replaced by a purely mechanical engine of revenge!"

[Jorlem]

If you haven't seen it already, take a look at today's xkcd.
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Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

[Proginoskes]

Well nuts. Obviously I need to brush up my chemistry, since until I read the article, I thought you were talking about microbes that were AsHON instead of CHON, not CHONAsS instead of CHONPS. And with all the focus on DNA, there is nothing in any of the articles to indicate that the bacterium uses arsenolipids rather than phospholipids in its cell membrane, which would be a much more substantial substitution.
Whenever I hear "based on ", I immediately think the element in question forms the "backbone": all life on Earth is Carbon-based because everything else is bonded to Carbon. This isn't Arsenic-based life, it's Carbon-based life that uses (or rather, is capable of using, since it doesn't even depend on it) Arsenic in place of Phosphorous in certain critical compounds.

[Dartz]

. It can swap arsenic for phosphorus so completely that arsenic is incorporated into its DNA and other biomolecules like ATP, according to the study. This is a first, and it upends our assumptions about how life works.

This would suggest to me that it can, with only trace elements of phosphorus still remaining in it. However, I think the point is made a few lines down from that. We keep looking for life as we know it here on Earth.... but life doesn't have to be exactly the same as it is here?
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Bob Schroeck]

I recall reading an article some years ago in a science journal about exactly that supposition -- that there may well have been parallel paths of evolutionary development along side us all the way through the history of life on earth, only they are so radically different from us that we may never recognize them for life. (Of course, it made the explicit supposition that such parallel paths are no farther advanced than one-celled -- or very simple multicelled -- organisms, but still...)
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.