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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Arsenic - not poisonous to all life forms |
| 2010-12-02 |
| New Life Form Discovered Per Gizmodo, NASA is preparing to announce the discovery of an entirely new form of life: Hours before their special news conference today, the cat is out of the bag: NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn't share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. This changes everything. At their conference today, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon will announce that they have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today. Instead of using phosphorus, the bacteria uses arsenic. All life on Earth is made of six components: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same. But not this one. This one is completely different. We knew that there were bacteria that processed arsenic, but this bacteria--discovered in the poisonous Mono Lake, California--is actually made of arsenic. The phosphorus is absent from its DNA. The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don't have to be like planet Earth. |
| Posted by:Glenmore |
| #6 with* |
| Posted by: Uleatch Dribble8106 2010-12-02 23:07 |
| #5 I think you just need to aim and transmit with enough power and they'll get it in the time it takes light to travel in empty space. We are already sending signals in every direction without terrestrial communications. |
| Posted by: Uleatch Dribble8106 2010-12-02 23:07 |
| #4 Any possible lifeforms are such an incredible distance away from us that about the only way we could communicate with them would be to erect a signaling panel in space, between our Sun and their sun. Like ship-to-ship communication, large panels would be opaque until an electrical current went through them, then they would become transparent. But it would still be between 50 and 100 years for even a simplex (one way) message. So if we set up a system, we would send a continual data stream in their direction. Then when they got the message, they would have to set up a similar system, so true communications would take between 100-200 years. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-12-02 21:30 |
| #3 Any possible lifeforms are such an incredible distance away from us that about the only way we could communicate with them would be to erect a signaling panel in space, between our Sun and their sun. Like ship-to-ship communication, large panels would be opaque until an electrical current went through them, then they would become transparent. But it would still be between 50 and 100 years for even a simplex (one way) message. So if we set up a system, we would send a continual data stream in their direction. Then when they got the message, they would have to set up a similar system, so true communications would take between 100-200 years. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-12-02 21:29 |
| #2 This is being spun as an indication that the universe must contain other life forms. Maybe. But don't forget the Fermi paradox -- "Where are they?" The more we find life forms that *could* exist elsewhere, and fail to actually find anything out there, the more it will beg the question - why not? "Where are they?" |
| Posted by: Iblis 2010-12-02 19:06 |
| #1 Arsenic, a "semi-metal", can best be described as biology's skeleton key. Appropriately, the amount of arsenic that can be in US drinking water is minuscule, because it is totally unpredictable. Inorganic compounds are the most dangerous, as if it is bound in organic compounds, it will tend to stay in that compound instead of interfering with other organic tissues. It effects people different based on sex, race, age, family, type of exposure, length of exposure, etc. In some people it can cause gangrene, in others, cancer, in others, nothing. There is no universal diagnosis for it. One weird ability is to dampen the body's immune system pathogen recognition. When a new pathogen enters the body, it is identified and an appropriate response is made. But when the recognition system fails to note it, it reproduces unchecked, and then at some point, the body notices the larger infection and overreacts. This overreaction can be more harmful than the pathogen. But arsenic is so common around the world that biological systems are attuned to it somewhat. This is how people can develop a resistance to it by consuming a small amount of it over time. Outside of well water, the biggest source in the US today is from wood treated with a green copper-arsenic solution. That combination is deadly to termites and other insects that attack wood. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-12-02 18:27 |