NASA Discovery: New Life
Dec-03-2010

In Mono Lake, California, NASA says that a form of life, never before found, is growing.

"It is terrestrial life, but not life as we know it," said Mary Voyek, NASA Astrobiology Program Director.

NASA announced Thursday that the microbe can live on arsenic, previously thought to just be toxic. Researchers replaced phosphorous with arsenic in a bacteria and it continued to grow.

"All life that we know requires carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. We've discovered an organism that can substitute one element for another," said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, NASA Astrobiology Research Fellow.

What it means? UAlbany Distinguished Teaching Professor Dr. John Delano, works with NASA and is the the Associate Director of the New York Center for Astrobiology at RPI.

He says that the announcement suggests other forms of life may be out there. "It just widens the definition of life, not only on earth, but opens wider the possibilities of life elsewhere in the galaxy," said Dr. Delano.

Some Capital Region residents weighed in on the find.

"There's got to be life everywhere," said Meshida Flournoi, from Schenectady.

"I don't know, it's still far fetched," said Stephen Joyner, from Schenectady.

Aliens? Not yet. But Dr. Delano says that the news continues to feed the questions people have asked for years.

"Are we alone? What does it all mean," said Delano. "We are the generation that will for the first time in human history begin to know some of the pieces of those answers."

He says that right now, NASA's Kepler Space Mission is looking for Earth-sized, and Earth-like planets orbiting the stars. If they find some, looking for life will be next.

Dr. Delano speculates that within some of our lifetimes, the stars will have more meaning.

"Point at a star and say we now know that there are planets orbiting that star that we know have some kind of life," he said.

Posted by Clay Kohut at 12:43 AM - Link to this entry  |  Share this entry  |  Print