In that case, i say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

I keep thinking of the Star trek line "It's life Jim ,but not as we know it":D
Ok so this changes the goal posts for extraterrestrial life ,if arsenic can replace phosphorous then the rest of the building blocks can probably be changed as well - Look's like the old golden age scifi writers with the really weird alien life forms may have been close to the mark :03:

Oberon beat you to it... :O:

Bugger...

I'd be more interested in the comments from the Life Form in question.

"Jed, the Ugly Bags of mostly Water are back."

"Ignore them Saddie. You know they're missing Arsenic and everyone knows only intellegent life forms have Arsenic."

"But Jed, how do we know they're not intellegent?"

"Saddie, They didn't know we could exist! How smart can they be?"

:har:

I lost count of the number of times someone said "not as we know it" or some close variation during the conference.

http://www.toosenhenk.nl/images/zoom...ize/WWW311.jpg
Translation:
Discovery: Bacterium able to survive arsenic

Nothing new, my mother-in-law has done so for years...

It never ceases to amaze me what life forms there are to discover on the good ole Earth.

Also I am glad that nobody drained the lake so far where the bacteria was found and built a strip mall on it... :up:

Now are they sure this life form originated on Earth?

Its so different from all other life that maybe its not from here.

... just saying... :hmmm:

by the way...


CALLED IT :D

well, ok the possibility is there.

I honestly don't think that anything would change when we would find alien life. It was the same when nations discovered other lands/continents where other people live. No big attitude changes happened.

While I am a big science nut, and very interested in the exploration of space, my point is that there is so much more to discover here which gets much fewer funding.
Or as the unknown Vietnam war participent said when Neil Armstrong spoke his famous words: "I wish this ****er would be down here"



@GR: credits to you! (Of course I am a lefty and so can't admit that someone is better than others, so I cannot send you the case of beer like I inrtended to - haha, jfwy :salute:!)

we need a few of those around :salute:

I wasn't paying complete attention to it, but I believe what they had was bacteria they obtained from the lake. They removed it to their lab, where they grew it, but instead of giving it phosphorus, they gave it extra arsenic. The bacteria took in the arsenic and used it where it would have used phosphorus in its DNA.

So, it's really not all that different, it's only a proof of concept that life doesn't need everything we used to think it needed. Not as earth-shattering as "We found life off of earth" or even "we found life on earth completely unrelated to what we knew". But still an important discovery.

It doesn't sound too different than the type of bacteria and organisms that we find around the toxic sea vents on the ocean floor.