Lake Mono, California, USA
New life has been discovered, right here on Earth! A NASA-funded research team explored the depths of Lake Mono in California and found a micro-organism that uses arsenic instead of phosphorus to live and reproduce. Why is this a big deal? Because all other known life forms on Earth are built from six basic ingredients: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. These are the building block from which all life is built – anything from pond scum to giraffes, from hemp to humans. Or so we thought. The discovery that an organism can substitute phosphorous with arsenic dramatically expands the definition both of life itself as well as what constitutes a “habitable zone”. It also begs this question: what other type of environments previously considered hostile to life may actually harbour life-forms? The hydrocarbon lakes of Titan? The methane clouds of Jupiter? The scalding sulfur sands of Venus? Exobiology has just added a chapter – and maybe an entire volume – to its book
To find out the details of this discovery, check out the NASA press release:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/astrobiology_toxic_chemical.html
