NASA announced the discovery of a new form of life ... on Earth
The recent NASA press conference was a disappointment to many. Rumors that cruised a couple of days before her suggested that NASA would announce the discovery of an extraterrestrial life form, but it turned out that this life was found on Earth. And, moreover, they actually found two more , or even three years ago . What is the sensation?
It turned out that the bacterium found in the “poisonous” lake Mono, in California, not only manages to eat arsenic , which is unique in itself. The bacterium, called GFAJ-1, uses arsenic in its DNA chains, RNA, proteins and cell membrane. Until recently, this was considered impossible in principle, since all organisms known to science on planet Earth, from bacteria and ending with large mammals, use the following six components in their DNA: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. And the fact that the detected bacterium instead of phosphorus can use arsenic, poisonous for almost all other living creatures of the planet, thoroughly agitated the scientific community.
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The bacterium in question is only about 5 micrometers long. Despite the skeptics' comments, they say, budgets were so cut in NASA that now you have to search for extraterrestrial civilizations on Earth, this discovery really changes the approach to the search for life on other planets. Probably, now a number of planets, the atmosphere of which was considered “not suitable” to allow the existence of life, will return to the list of “potentially inhabited”. True, whether the sense of humanity from creatures that feed on arsenic will be an open question.
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It turned out that the bacterium found in the “poisonous” lake Mono, in California, not only manages to eat arsenic , which is unique in itself. The bacterium, called GFAJ-1, uses arsenic in its DNA chains, RNA, proteins and cell membrane. Until recently, this was considered impossible in principle, since all organisms known to science on planet Earth, from bacteria and ending with large mammals, use the following six components in their DNA: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. And the fact that the detected bacterium instead of phosphorus can use arsenic, poisonous for almost all other living creatures of the planet, thoroughly agitated the scientific community.
')
The bacterium in question is only about 5 micrometers long. Despite the skeptics' comments, they say, budgets were so cut in NASA that now you have to search for extraterrestrial civilizations on Earth, this discovery really changes the approach to the search for life on other planets. Probably, now a number of planets, the atmosphere of which was considered “not suitable” to allow the existence of life, will return to the list of “potentially inhabited”. True, whether the sense of humanity from creatures that feed on arsenic will be an open question.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/109275/
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