NASA News Conference

[Ron Collins]

I like it, but is was very anticlimactic for all the hype that was generated.

 

[dyingsun]

Well, I won't really get excited about a NASA press release until they say 'we found extraterrestrial life on another goddamn Planet'. Steps..

And to be clear, I'm talking microbes or even smaller things that escape our current categorizations.

 

[NTS]

It's scientifically interesting, but it won't rock my everyday world. Here's a link:

Arsenic-eating microbe may redefine chemistry of life : Nature News

Edit: As far as alien life, the best place to start looking is right here on Earth. Some scientists speculate that life could have originated more than once (or come here from elsewhere) and that some of that life might still be around. Apparently there's a lot of microbial life that isn't well categorized, and some alien form might have been overlooked.

 

[dyingsun]

As said, it is really interesting, we can and do only categorize biological life (and for that matter, all things) from our 'Table of Elements' we created. I wager a wild wild guess that there are things out there no one can wrap their mind around.

So, nothing new.

 

[NTS]

Good commentary here on the arsenic life discovery (and the hype around it):

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=15573

 

[Kieran]

Well, i hope the scientific community jumps on to this, after all, all we knew from biological 'life' was tied to H2O and O2 and as in the article stated ' Carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur'. This is far more interesting than many people realize.

It's an amazing discovery, and proves again the possibilities are endless. Life reacts to the situations it finds itself in seemly. But I think anyone with half a brain cell knew that before the announcement, also this discovery, is not a recent one. It was know about back in 2008 believe or not! So Nasa, probably was looking ahead to a future date, when looking for funding to do future projects?

 

[plumbbob12]

Phosphorus and arsenic chemistries are very interesting, and analogist to carbon and silicon. “The similarity between arsenic and phosphorus is so great that arsenic will partly substitute for phosphorus in biochemical reactions”. This relationship has been known for some time. What the news folks did not pick up on was the change the NASA news conference signaled in its priorities. Before this news release, NASA went out of its way to NOT involve life chemistry programs in there missions. The last investigation for life on other planets was the Viking mission conducted in the 70’s. The chemistry results were at best ambiguous, and hinted very strongly toward life on Mars. Afterward, NASA dropped the life experiments, and concentrated on geology. I look at this news conference as being a very large step toward bringing back the life sciences into space exploitation.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
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