So NASA’s big announcement, which was supposed to be slated for Friday but someone spilled the beans early, is that some scientists have discovered that some bacteria “very likely” use arsenic instead of phosphorous to survive.
The big deal: Nearly every living system on this planet uses a molecule that includes phosphorus in order to keep things going. It’s an important part of the energy cycle that keeps you and I breathing and alive.
The not-so-big-deal: We already know (or should know) that you don’t have to mimic life on this planet exactly to do a lot of things life does already. For instance, you know the horseshoe crab? If you live on the East Coast, especially in the north east and have gone to the beach once or twice, you probably do. These suckers don’t use iron to hold oxygen (the reason your blood looks red), they use copper. They’re also a very ancient species around for a very long time.
What does that tell you? That life doesn’t look like you do when you look in the mirror. Duh. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Now, you’re probably gonna say, but this bacteria is extraterrestrial. Uh, no, actually it’s from Mono Lake…you know…in California. Even better, if you read the WSJ article…near the end they mention they actually weaned the bacteria off phosphorous and can’t confirm there were no traces of phosphorus still in the test environment.
That’s sort of like saying I managed to wean my friend here off water though I can’t say if he was drinking out of the hose when my back was turned. Science at its best.
In the end, while it’s an interesting finding, it’s nothing ground breaking. You know what I want to know? I want to hear about some sort of beast roaming the surface of Titan imbibing vast quantities of liquid methane to live or see the Loch Ness monster surface from a plume hole on Enceladus. Or better yet, have an astronomer look down a telescope to find some alien guy sitting on Mars looking back (yeah, like the cartoons).
As much as I believe there is life “out there”, the more I’ve learned about how life started here, the more I realize how rare it is. Sorry but those types that think some big omnipotent grandfather accidentally bumped the coffee table and created this place in 7 days need to work on their perception of reality. Life on this planet took a lot of fighting and had a lot of near misses.
It’s pretty complex but you can boil it down to a simple fact…if we didn’t accidentally smack into a large body that would help form our moon, put it in orbit around us, and kick up our core temperature a notch or two, we wouldn’t be here.
We have that beautiful rock out there to thank for magnetic fields and plate tectonics. Magnetic fields protect us from ample doses of radiation and help keep our atmosphere with that wonderful atom called Oxygen (no not the network) in place. Don’t believe me, look at Mars. Barely anything left in its atmosphere. Plate tectonics saved us at least once if not more back when the planet almost froze completely over. If those plates didn’t move (and, thanks to the moon’s relatively speedy orbit, move fast enough), the ice would’ve just locked and that would’ve been the end of our little single-celled ancestors. But a little tension allowed volcanic vents to reemerge from the ice and keep this planet going.
Of course, I can’t prove all of this stuff…this is what scientists figured out based on a lot of clues–some very compelling. Then again, who knows if we got all traces of life out of the experiment?
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