Surprise, surprise.NASA's big announcement wasn't that scientists discovered alien life forms roaming the solar system.
They did however find the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic.
This is a major discovery that officials said can "crack open the door" to other life forms.
"The definition of life has just expanded," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. "As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it."
The discovery was found in California's Mono Lake, known for its unusual chemistry, especially its high salinity, high alkalinity, and high levels of arsenic.
The newly discovered microbe, strain GFAJ-1, is a member of a common group of bacteria, the Gammaproteobacteria.
In the laboratory, researchers successfully grew microbes from Mono Lake that included generous helpings of arsenic.
When researchers removed the phosphorus and replaced it with arsenic the microbes continued to grow. Subsequent analyses indicated that the arsenic was being used to produce the building blocks of new GFAJ-1 cells.
Starting earlier this week, the Internet was rampant with rumors that NASA would possibily announce aliens had been found.
A sports book even got in on the action taking bets on the odds the announcement would be NASA found a life form on Mars.
Image: GFAJ-1 grown on arsenic. Photo credit: NASA
2 comments:
I keep telling you, all you will find out there are little green illegitimate children of Captain James T Kirk. They are everywhere!
Look what NASA did now. All that space junk & toxic waste left in space created a new species. Expected arrival to Earth December 2012.
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