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Alien life form ‘is here on Earth’
- mebassett 16y agobit of a misleading title - potentially arsenic-metabolising lifeforms aren't "alien" to earth. "It means that life began not just once but at least twice on Earth." Still exciting, but less so than potential ET's (e.g. meteors carrying lifeforms to earth, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_rain_in_Kerala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_rain_in_Kerala)
- J3L2404 16y agoIf life began twice on Earth, it almost surely developed somewhere else.
- alexandros 16y agoI know. Figured changing the title would put me in a worse position than just keeping it as it is. Perhaps a moderator can change it to something more appropriate.
- Maciek416 16y agoIf this story turns out to be true my first questions would be: 1) Do the arsenic-feeding microbes have DNA/RNA or some other system in place? 2) Do they appear to be subject to natural selection? 3) Have they spent this entire time in the lake?
- mebassett 16y ago"2) Do they appear to be subject to natural selection?" why would they not be subject to natural selection?
- Maciek416 16y agoI guess I might have phrased the question differently. I recently saw a video somewhere of Richard Dawkins talking about what he thinks of the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and among other things he was talking about his high degree of certainty that whatever life may exist on other planets, it's likely to be subject to the same forces of natural selection as exist for life here on Earth. It would be very nice to have a second example to suggest, "wherever life happens, evolution as-we-know-it happens".
- khafra 16y agoIf there's imperfect replication and death, natural selection happens. It's a mathematical fact; observation is unnecessary for confirmation. Although I haven't seen the video, and Dawkins is a smart guy, so perhaps he was making some related point.
- cosgroveb 16y agoThis comment seems wrong to me. What if Einstein had said, "sorry, General Relativity is a mathematical fact; observation is unnecessary for confirmation" instead of proposing tests! Edit: Also, I think it would be just plain cool to observe natural selection in life that arose completely independently of our own. I don't think any reasonable person seriously doubts that natural selection is necessary for life.
- Maciek416 16y agoNot only that but it would be interesting to see natural selection processes evolving using something other than what's familiar to us (DNA). If something like this were truly separate from us, wouldn't it have evolved its own genetic system (or equivalent) as well?
- eru 16y agoSome bacteria and viri use RNA. But I guess that doesn't really count as being different enough from DNA.
- bungula 16y agoFunny thing is, Einstein did in fact pretty much said it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Deflection_of_light_by_the_Sun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Def... "When asked by his assistant what his reaction would have been if general relativity had not been confirmed by Eddington and Dyson in 1919, Einstein famously made the quip: "Then I would feel sorry for the dear Lord. The theory is correct anyway.""
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- NathanKP 16y agoThis article is totally speculation. They don't even know what NASA's announcement is. This reminds me of the speculation about Apple's announcement, and the resulting disappointment when it turned out to be just an announcement that the Beatles were now on iTunes. I'm going to pass on the speculation and wait for the real announcement from NASA.
- crocowhile 16y agoThis is what happens when you try your best to build suspense. It was Apple that announced "tomorrow is a day you will never forget". If NASA is playing the same trick, shame on them.
- rubyrescue 16y agoironically, i might not because the hyperbole was so great; i'll always remember it as the canonical example of an over-hyped announcement.
- Groxx 16y agoEspecially if NASA suddenly starts selling The Beatles. Now, if they discovered an arsenic-eating, microbial alien life form which could play Beatles tunes, that would be a day I'd never forget. The day the universe jumped the shark.
- anthonycerra 16y agoIt's fun to speculate. Most people talk about sports stats or politics. We speculate about NASA announcements. And NASA could learn a thing or two about branding from Apple. Space needs to be cool again.
- jpwagner 16y agoseems like a great guess to me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felisa_Wolfe-Simon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felisa_Wolfe-Simon
- D0rkvsMaximvs 16y agoUnless it's a leggy brunette with green skin, I don't wanna hear about it.
- iwr 16y agoSince we're in the realm of speculation, perhaps NASA found working (alien) nanobots that are somehow programmed not to turn Earth into grey goo.
- zyb09 16y agoOr maybe the found a portal into another dimension containing giant tentacles floating in the sky.
- michaelfeathers 16y agoAgain?
- roadnottaken 16y agoThere's nothing here that really shows that "life began not just once but at least twice on Earth." Just because they have different metabolism (even dramatically different) it doesn't exclude the possibility that life began once and then branched (via evolution) into these two groups that derive their energy from different elements. After all, sulfur-reducing bacteria (which use sulfur instead of oxygen) are well-known and nobody suggests independent origins for them.
- michaelfeathers 16y agoThat makes me wonder if there are any "you can't get there from here"s in biology.. metabolic bases that are so different that they could not have been progenitors of each other through evolution. I suppose the answer is probabilistic.
- tome 16y agoThis is what "intelligent design" proponents are trying to prove all the time, isn't it?
- michaelfeathers 16y agoTrue, but if found a striking example of "you can't get there from here" would marginalize their efforts.
- roadnottaken 16y agoWell, as gort pointed out, if they adhere to the central dogma (DNA > RNA > Protein) then the answer is 'probably not' (i.e. you can get everywhere from there). However, if they used an entirely different type of chemistry to make life then I think it would be likely that they evolved separately.
- eliben 16y agoDoesn't it depend on just how different these organisms are? If, for example, they have nothing resembling the cell of a prokaryotic or eukaryotic organisms (DNA, etc.), it can definitely mean something big. If they have the same "conceptual" cell but the details of its internals differ somewhat, then indeed it's far from scandalous, it just means the evolutionary tree branched earlier than with other organisms. The second case would also be interesting in itself, of course.
- gort 16y agoIt should be pointed out that there's a fairly vast range of metabolisms already known for bacteria. The test of whether life developed twice will be how whatever-it-is stores its genome (DNA?) and how it goes about making useful molecules (proteins, etc). All currently known life does this in roughly the same way. * * (discounting viruses, which are oddities that probably arose from cellular life)
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- daeken 16y ago> * (discounting viruses, which are oddities that probably arose from cellular life) This is a general post, not intended at you specifically, but you imply that viruses are living, so I feel the need to throw this out there: I think the key reason the exception has to be made for viruses here is that viruses simply aren't alive. They have no biological processes, they don't reproduce, don't eat, don't breathe, don't create or consume energy, etc. A virus is really nothing more than a piece of data in a container. One of the traditional arguments is that they do reproduce, they just do it via a living cell, but to that I say: does a CD reproduce when a human copies it? I think that in a couple decades, we'll look back on viruses being defined as living organisms and wonder what we were thinking.
- wglb 16y agoAh, then what about prions?
- daeken 16y agoI don't know much at all about prions, so take this with a large grain of salt, but it seems to me that most -- if not all -- of the arguments against viruses being living organisms apply to prions. In the case of prions, the data is just in the form of a malformed protein, rather than a snippet of RNA or DNA. There may be something about them that I don't know that negates one or more of those arguments, though.
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- colkassad 16y agoIs it scientifically possible that life does not exist on other worlds? This is a serious question. Billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars...it would be mind boggling to me that it would be possible that we are the only planet in the universe with life. Has anyone studied the possibility -- a sort of reverse Drakes equation (for life in general) -- that we could be the only planet with life?
- mfukar 16y agoHow about 1 - chance_of_life_on_other_worlds?
- ceejayoz 16y agoOf course it's possible. We might be on the only planet in the entire universe that had the right combination of chance events and conditions for life to arise. It's generally considered unlikely, but it's possible up until the instant we prove that there's life on another planet.
- mousebender 16y agoThis article belongs on Digg, not HN.
- floatingatoll 16y agoThis article title is missing a question mark.
- samstokes 16y agoOT, but did anyone else feel surprise and nerdjoy to read that this actually exists on Earth: a deadly poisonous lake... Mono Lake, in California’s Yosemite National Park... one of the highest natural concentrations of arsenic I thought forbidden lakes whose inky waters are death to mortals were the stuff of fantasy novels. (In fact, any Terry Brooks fans think this was the inspiration for the Hadeshorn?) (After a bit of further reading, it seems the article overplayed the "deadly" aspect, since fish live in the lake, birds eat there, and humans have dived in it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_lake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_lake)
- presidentender 16y agoThe Berkeley Pit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Pit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Pit) is similarly fantasy-novel in its toxicity. Indeed, it is the result of the works of men, inadvertently poisoning the land in their search for buried riches. It dissolves the geese that land on it, but they still found life in it not too long ago.
- samstokes 16y ago+1 for "dissolves the geese".
- pig 16y agoGoose goo
- presidentender 16y agoThat's an exaggeration, but it is extremely hostile.
- spacemanaki 16y agoThis was the subject of a Radiolab segment not too long ago: http://www.radiolab.org/2010/jun/28/even-the-worst-laid-plans/ http://www.radiolab.org/2010/jun/28/even-the-worst-laid-plan... I have to post links to Radiolab whenever something related comes up on HN because I am so sure that many HN readers would love Radiolab, and I am afraid there are still people out there who haven't discovered it.
- jff 16y agoWell, this would certainly fit the pattern of NASA's previous "big announcements". Everybody speculates and guesses, says it's little green men, but in the end it's just an interesting discovery which technically relates to their teaser announcement. They tell us they've discovered something regarding extraterrestrial life. Then it turns out they mean "We found bacteria that like arsenic, here on Earth". Sure, we see where you're going, but in the end everyone is going to hate you, NASA, for making a huge fuss and then hitting us with a biological whimper, not an extraterrestrial bang.
- lukeschlather 16y agoLiving organisms that aren't based on something resembling DNA/RNA would be just as big a deal as extraterrestrial life, and I don't think the labeling of such organisms as 'alien' is misdirection. Now, if it proves that they're merely DNA/RNA based organisms that happen to metabolize arsenic, that would be a biological whimper, as yes, they're just an earlier branch in the evolutionary tree. However something that appears not to share a common ancestor with the rest of life on the planet would be a huge deal.
- ANH 16y agoI think he's probably on target. This was my prediction in the previous thread on the upcoming press conference: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=1952449 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=1952449
- akkartik 16y ago"Phosphorus is a key element in all known forms of life. Inorganic phosphorus in the form of the phosphate PO43– plays a major role in biological molecules such as DNA and RNA where it forms part of the structural framework of these molecules. Living cells also use phosphate to transport cellular energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Nearly every cellular process that uses energy obtains it in the form of ATP. ATP is also important for phosphorylation, a key regulatory event in cells. Phospholipids are the main structural components of all cellular membranes. Calcium phosphate salts assist in stiffening bones." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus#Biological_role http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus#Biological_role
- bediger 16y agoSome biologists have made a case for DNA replication evolving twice, independently: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC148579/pdf/273389.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC148579/pdf/27338... Apparently you can also make a case for the evolution of DNA itself, possibly from a 2-letter alphabet: http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.0445 http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.0445
- kin 16y agoReading this article was like watching a 2-hour special on the Discovery Channel about a new discovery that turned out to be a mistake
- InclinedPlane 16y agoAs long as we're speculating wildly, let's pretend that NASA is announcing that they've found a crashed alien spacecraft chock full of new technologies. So, who wants a hover car?!
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y agoChoose your news source for this story: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962894 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962894 - go.com http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962893 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962893 - nytimes.com http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962846 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962846 - nature.com http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962696 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962696 - longislandpress.com http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962386 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962386 - gizmodo.com http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962200 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962200 - gizmodo.com http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962110 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962110 - google.com http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1957823 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1957823 - skymania.com http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953228 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953228 - kottke.org
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y agoOfficial announcement: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1963296 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1963296