Frickin' awesome! A completely independent lineage of life on this planet. (If I'm reading the article correctly, it's stating that it's got no relationship to phosphorous-based DNA.) And it's on this planet.
If this planet can evolve life more than once, then surely there are plenty of other places out there where life has developed. I think our universe just got a bit more crowded today.
EDIT: Okay, reading another article, it's reading like the bacteria simply adapted to its environment and used arsenic to replace phosphorous. That makes sense too and is no less exciting, because it proves that life is sustainable with different elements.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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Teh PW
Self Impossed Exile (This Space for rent)
Member # 1203
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I wonder if Gizmodo is a girl cause that crack about STD was hillarious...
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Gizmodo is a Web site. It says right under the picture that the author is that site's Jesus Diaz, whom I would assume to be male.
Registered: Mar 1999
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I've been there! I stood sweating, on the awful-smelling, fly-swarm covered shores of Mono Lake several years ago when on a trip back from Vegas.
It is, without a doubt, the single worst place I have ever been to- ever. Our tour guide (some grad student) was going on and on about it's ecological uniqueness and how it needs to be preserved as a national park- I kept thinking "Why? This place is a hellhole."
Shows what I know!
The lake's saline content makes these weird "sculptures" of salt in the lake itself and the only thing they knew that grew there was bacteria, which the swarms of flies ate, which in turn fed the swarms of birds which pooped in the lake (feeding the bacteria and microbes -and occasionally birds, being overcome from the fumes die and fall in- getting rapidly disolved by the lake).
It was a microcosm ecology- and I could appreciate that, but my leg wound was very bad back then and just being close to the lake was excruciating- by the time the tour was over, I was exhausted- and wanted nothing more than to be as far away from there as possible! I was shaking.
Gotta tell my pal Chris- he's the one that decided to go there in the first place!
I bet they finally get that National Park status!
I can not imagine going to work there every day (discovery not withstanding)- it's the bleakest, most depressing place on our planet....I think the bacteria swapped the phosphorus to arsenic as an attempt at mass suicide.
Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: I can not imagine going to work there every day (discovery not withstanding)- it's the bleakest, most depressing place on our planet....I think the bacteria swapped the phosphorus to arsenic as an attempt at mass suicide.
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No..what a Swindon? Does it have thousands of flies and smell like salt, death and biirdshit? Must have high property values!
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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It's amusing enough that Swindon's webpage has no pictures of the place.. http://www.swindon.gov.uk/
Really- what sort of place has no glamor-shots of it's city? Even New Jersey has some nice (if misleading) photos of gardens or whatever.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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That would be because it's Dante's inferno incarnate and if they showed pictures then nobody would go there. It even has it's own five circles of hell.
Now that's a town that doesn't want people escaping once they're in. I escaped that thing once by following the postman. He seamed to know where to go.
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