You’d have to be living on Mars not to pick up on the big space news last week. The Internet was abuzz with the discovery of bacteria that seemed to not only tolerate poisonous arsenic but also incorporate it into their DNA structure.
The bugs appear to have pulled off a never-before-seen genetic Houdini act of swapping one of the six basic elements of life with an alternative element, arsenic -- something you usually only read about in detective homicide stories.
This "redefines life" said the astrobiology researchers reporting in Science magazine, because it was laboratory evidence that organisms can be more chemically nimble than previously thought.
Last week's news generated headlines like: Microbes Upend Decades of Science, ... Microbes Suggest Extraterrestrial Life Possible, ... Lake Bacteria Seen as Model for Life in Space. Some of my favorite headlines are: Arsenic and Old Space, ... NASA POISON ALIENS, ... I Sing the Bacterium Arsenic.
But finding microbes that are unusually clever at adapting to hostile environments tells us nothing about the origin of life on Earth -- or anywhere else in the universe for that matter. In fact, we are hard pressed for a good working definition for life in the cosmic context.
If scientists and journalists were honest about what is being witnessed daily by thousands of people throughout the world in the skies of Earth, there would be no need to look further than that for extraterrestrial life. To read the rest of the article, click here.