Back in December, NASA announced that they had discovered an alien life form! (pictured above) And guess where they found this alien….. not on another planet, but rather in the good old state of CA. Not exactly what you were expecting huh? Yeah me either, but still this is a huge breakthrough in science.
NASA may not have found a green human like creature walking around on another planet, but what they did find is evidence that makes it seem more likely that such creatures exists. The microorganism in the picture was found in Mono Lake, CA. The lake has a high concentration of arsenic and extremely high acidity, making it a very toxic place for human beings. If you went swimming your skin would melt off in a matter of minutes! But this creature fares much better. What's alien about it you might ask? Well, it has a DNA structure just like ours, but instead of using the element Phosphorus as the backbone which holds it together, it uses Arsenic. (In the picture below replace the phosphate group with arsenic)
Scientists think this is so because the environment it lives in is deprived of phosphorus, and believe it or not arsenic is the closest thing in nature that can replace phosphorus (from a chemistry standpoint).
So what does this tell scientists? Well, it proves that conditions on other planets don't need to be exactly like those on Earth for life to form! It probes the possibility that a planet with arsenic in its atmosphere instead of phosphorus, for example, may still be able to harvest life.Whereas until this discovery was made, any planet that didn't have conditions exactly like those of Earth would have been immediately crossed off the list of planets that may harvest life.
Next Topic: The Habitable Zone
Image credit: NASA (top)
Next Topic: The Habitable Zone
Image credit: NASA (top)
