NASA's arsenic-eating life form gets a second look

NASA's arsenic-eating life form gets a second look

www.spacedaily.com

Soon after NASA-funded researchers announced this month they had found a new life form that thrives on arsenic, critics took to the blogosphere with skeptical views and downright insults.
"I don't know whether the authors are just bad scientists or whether they're unscrupulously pushing NASA's 'There's life in outer space!' agenda," wrote Canadian microbiologist Rosie Redfield in a blog that ignited the web furor.

The criticism spread with lightning speed, sparking a wide debate over what....

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Obviously something can't be taken as a fact until there is some solid undeniable evidence, but at the same time, dismissing something as "flim flam" pretty much straight away is also quite stupid. Looking back in history, every time a new theory is presented, it is immediately dismissed just because it's new and it challenges the status quo of science. Some of the leading theories today took centuries to become widely accepted by the scientific community, and I think people's unwillingness to take a new theory seriously is part of the reason it's taken the world so long to advance in scientific theory, even after the dark ages ended, there are too many big egos in science and people more concerned with being right than with discovering the truth. As for extraterrestrial life, again there's no proper evidence, but with all the billions of planets in the universe, what are the chances that only one would have life on it?

Claire. UK.

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There is no way we are the only beings in the universe, but what appears is that NASA is trying to accelerate the discovery interfering in the processes that generate life. On the other hand, we see how difficult it is for scientists when some traditional pillars of science are shaken.


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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Albert Einstein

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mahatma Gandhi

reply to post by Kryties


No doubt about this.

reply to post by Kryties


Doube post.

The thing is, though, the arsenate (?) reducing bacteria don't really represent grounds for a paradigm shift in cellular biology. For starters, they haven't, from what I have read, cultered them in a phosphate free environment, and chemoautotrophs (if that's the word) have been known about for a while now.

I don't know whether the scientists themselves were responsible for the, frankly, overblown hype surrounding this particular finding, but whoever did overblow it so greatly deserves to be ridiculed - not because the concepts of the paper are necessarily false, but because they spent so long getting everyone worked up over... nothing, really. The bacteria haven't been shown to exist in the absence of one of our fundamental elements, the bacteria definitively DON'T represent a separate origin of life, and while they are certainly interesting for their feeding habits, it's not exactly ground-breaking. Heck, there are sea-urchins that can much their way right through reinforced concrete (including the steel parts) pillars, but I wouldn't try to present that as a finding impacting the search for extra-terrestrials ("Well, because we now know that some life-forms can chew through the materials we use to make our space-crafts, we shall have to be extra careful, when searching for ET life, not to get too close to their teeth.")

Do you see what I mean?

reply to post by TheWill


I undestand you.

This rush is because of the money, as always.

Wall of smoke to hide the good sense.