yes, and hope they don't develop a culinary interest in bipedal sapiens.
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NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical
- Thread starter Grat3fulh3ad
- Start date
It's not nearly quite as simply as you're making it sound. First of all due to the discovery of this bacteria we're having to totally rethink what we call life because this form of life changes the definition. Also it's not that life just evolved this way because that's what it had to work with. Undisturbed, life evolved in those waters to survive a hostile environment but they still had a source for phospherous and therefore still used it just like every other form of life that we knew of. Then the scientists removed the phospherous and the thing evolved in real time to substitute Arsenic for phospherous and incorporate it into it's DNA thereby making it unlike any life we knew of.
Which for all intents and purposes would make it alien life. The headlines weren't misleading, people mislead themselves thru assumption.
So it's like finding a plant that can live without magnesium and substitute Calcium for everything. In other words like finding a form of life that doesn't match anything we know or understand about life.
P and As are in the same column...for MANY reactions, either "will work". Just as Mg and Ca are interchanged when concentrations are too high in plants. If you took out ALL the Mg...SOME plants COULD still live...just like the bacteria. This isn't some magic newly evolved life form. It's a bacteria that somehow can substitute Ar for P...a VERY close element. I'm sure there IS some lower life form that CAN use just Ca and not "need" Mg. Some algae perhaps. It just needs to be found.
Everyone keeps saying...it uses a TOXIC element now! OMG! It's completely different! No...both P and As are toxic! In fact, P is MUCH more "toxic" than As. It fucking catches fire when exposed to air! How much more "toxic" can you get? It's "toxic" to us...because it IS replacing the P and it will make you die...it doesn't make the bacteria die...that's all. Don't make a mountain out of a mole hill. It's like some people can't drink milk and others can. It's a metabolism difference...not some new life form!
Head,
I CAN'T ignore you...it comes up as "Moderators or administrators cannot be put on ignore"...believe me...I'm as tired of reading your BS as I can get. HOW MANY TIMES have I asked you to "stay away"? My words my be "harsher"...but your actions are despicable! So, come up with a way for me to ignore you...and you won't have to put up with my "correcting" you. Deal?
Or...you could give me your address and we can settle this like men...real men...not little girls. Might shouldn't mean right...but sometimes it's just the right thing to do to an annoying bug.
sac beh
Member
You're delusional. Just like the last time you got yourself banned, this time you came to a thread and started arguing immediately. Read your first post to this thread again: https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=4052090&postcount=14
Stop arguing and leave it be. Its obvious to everyone but you that you're provoking this as always.
Physical threats now? Remind what all this has to do with the NASA study?
...
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funny
"it fucking catches fire when exposed to air! How much more "toxic" can you get?"
"toxicity" and "flamability" are COMPLETELY different characteristics.
"P is much more toxic than As"
VERSUS
Arsenic is many many many times more toxic than Potassium.
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Nobody is saying "it uses a TOXIC element now! OMG! It's completely different!" well nobody but you, to give reason to the rest of what you're saying. That's not even close to an accurate description of what the discovery is about. If it was just merely substituting one thing for another that would be no big deal but it's not just substituting one for another but it's also incorporating the substitution into it's structure, it's very being. Even that's not the big news, the big news is that finding this changes the way we define life and that change changes where we might look to find undiscovered life.
Your comparison to a fictional plant that we just haven't found yet is riddiculous. If they were to find such a plant it would be just as amazing a find as this one was and would have the same effect of redefining how we think of life and where we might look for it.
As for this issue with Head, I wish the two of you would take your little battle to pm's. There is simply no reason why the rest of us should be forced to view it in the forums. I'll tell you this much though, you got some serious anger management issues if one person's opinion on a site for potheads angers you to the point of wanting to fight in real life.
Interesting. Makes you wonder what other elements can be interchanged and still sustain life. I wonder if we will ever find a replacement for oxygen? If the backbone of DNA can be replaced the possibilities would seem endless IMO.
the other one that comes to mind... From sci-fi... is organisms which would use Si in place of C.
Yeah Carbon. That would be even wilder considering we are carbon based organisms. It's quite the paradigm shifting discovery considering the potential possibilities.
Good read.
What would you have said about THIS before you read this study? What would you have said to someone last month who talked about life using As instead of P? Something living right here on earth, using a completely NEW way of doing things? You would have said the same thing you're telling me...they're full of shit.
You, head, a few others have this "science is God" thing going on. You think the latest and greatest...is the pinnacle. It's not...we've barely made the first few steps. We don't even KNOW all the live on the planet...how CAN you sit there and say I'm wrong? Maybe next month a study WILL show an algae that doesn't have ANY Mg. You DON'T KNOW what's out there. You don't know how EVERYTHING works...yet you claim to now that some "study" say's it does. Get it? I'm the devils advocate here...where there's ONE "unique" life form...doesn't it follow that there may be more?
That's all I'm saying...don't be so sure of the "latest and greatest" this or that. ESPECIALLY when it's "groundbreaking". I'll bet in a few years, they'll find it wasn't so unique after all.
The fighting thing...I think he's a punk...I think he deserves a good whipping. He's a pain in my ass. I try to ignore him automatically but I get: "Sorry Grat3fulh3ad is a moderator/admin and you are not allowed to ignore him or her." So, I guess it'll have to be shear will power that restrains me from reading his drivel. He CAN grow, but his world views are a bit out there...I hate for people to be fooled by the rhetoric. I only push back when provoked...
All kinds...it's up to the organism whether it can survive. When one thing is missing, ANY atom/molecule with the same charge/shape sometimes get's used. The thing that saves us ALL from being "poisoned" is that the elements/molecules that DO readily get mistakenly used by likeforms...are rare enough not to cause problems.
Take hemoglobin...it's there to pick up O2 from the lungs. But CO get's picked up WAY easier...it will be completely gone before any O2 get's picked up. So WHY is this? Well...it doesn't matter that CO get's picked up...because we hardly ever get exposed to CO. We don't hang out in fires. It doesn't matter.
So, if you look long enough, in enough places, and do enough experiments to enough organisms...you going to find some "mutants" that can do some pretty amazing stuff. It's the theory of large numbers...if you have a million people, you get a one in a million event EVERY day...making it not so eventful any more. We've got a LOT of looking and experimenting left to go...don't get too excited just yet. More is coming...I guarantee it.
Saying that I think any new scientific discovery is the pinnacle of anything is a blatant LIE, and cannot be demonstrated in one thing I've ever posted. Same with HempKat and others... Only person bringing up any such concepts at all seems to be ibjamming.
This discovery isn't in any way at all about "the latest and greatest" anything... Are you really still misunderstanding, or just trolling that hard? Like all science it is simply another step along the ever unfolding path of discovery.
This is about discovering an animal which has a property that has never before been observed, and that the discovery adds to the ever improving picture of the nature of reality that is science... and it is the nature of science to be ever adding to and clarifying our knowledge, there is no such thing as pinnacle... it is incongruous with the concept of science.
Your accusations are unfounded, unsupportable, and naive.
To repair the misguided example you just gave...
If there was a species of mammal discovered that could live equally well in a CO rich environment, by metabolizing CO in place of O2, then it would be more analogous to this discovery. They did not find some 'mutant' individuals they discovered an inherent quality that a species has evolved to possess.
Your arguments make it seem like you don't understand the discovery, and don't want to understand it, because you dislike either science or the people who enjoy discussing science.
This discovery isn't in any way at all about "the latest and greatest" anything... Are you really still misunderstanding, or just trolling that hard? Like all science it is simply another step along the ever unfolding path of discovery.
This is about discovering an animal which has a property that has never before been observed, and that the discovery adds to the ever improving picture of the nature of reality that is science... and it is the nature of science to be ever adding to and clarifying our knowledge, there is no such thing as pinnacle... it is incongruous with the concept of science.
Your accusations are unfounded, unsupportable, and naive.
To repair the misguided example you just gave...
If there was a species of mammal discovered that could live equally well in a CO rich environment, by metabolizing CO in place of O2, then it would be more analogous to this discovery. They did not find some 'mutant' individuals they discovered an inherent quality that a species has evolved to possess.
Your arguments make it seem like you don't understand the discovery, and don't want to understand it, because you dislike either science or the people who enjoy discussing science.
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What would I have said about this before the study? I don't know it would depend on how it was presented. If someone was trying to pass off a personal belief in such a life form with no evidence I'd tell them they were just speculating and without evidence to support it their speculation meant nothing. If they presented a sound reasoning not influenced by emotion of how such a life form could exist I'd be more inclined to believe them but would still point out that without evidence their theory meant nothing.
The only problem though is your scenario for this question is different then what happened. This bacteria didn't live off of Arsenic initially. It survived where high levels of arsenic were present which was unusual but not exactly news. The fact was there was phospheous for it to live off of just not much of it. Still as long as it was there it still behaved like life as we expect it. Now the fact it still lived off phospherous in a strong arsenic environment is probably what got the scientists doing what they did to make this discovery. Which was to deprive it completely of phospherous and see what it would do. What it did was behave like no other life we have ever encountered. Not in that it was just a new life form we never saw before but that it was changed on a fundemental level down to the DNA.
Now where you get the notion that anybody thinks this is the pinnacle of anything is beyond me. Sounds to me like you don't really read or try to understand what anyone is saying but rather you just make assumptions based on "feelings" you have about the person. Me and head both said early on that all this study really does is force us to rethink where we might find life on other planets. Now that we know life can spontaneously adapt in realtime to an environment we would tend to think of as lethal. In other words, before if we found a planet whose atmosphere was almost entirely made of arsenic we probably would have said "No life could survive there so why bother to look?" Now having learned what we've learned we would know better then to make that assumption. That's it though, that's all anyone is saying this study means. That's hardly saying this is the pinnacle of anything or that science is God. In fact what it is saying is we've just taken some very small baby steps in a new direction.
As for the fighting thing, okay so you think he's a punk, so what? Maybe he is a punk. Who knows? More importantly who cares? What real difference does it make to your life that some annonymous person on the internet, who you will likely never meet in real life and who will likely never have a direct impact on anything you do in the real world, is a punk or not? Why is it that you should feel it your responsibility to whip his ass? Because he said something you didn't like? That you don't agree with? Because he gave you some negative rep points that have no real meaning outside your own ego? Come on, that's not manly testosterone driven thinking, that's childish schoolyard bully thinking. It's just plain stupid too because if a person acted in a way to piss you off before and you beat him up chances are just as good that he'll try to piss you off ten times more as they are he'll be intimidated to leave you alone.
Then there is the fact that you clearly don't know head very well if you think reacting to him the way you do is the smart way to go. I've aknowledged before that me and head have had our differences before and yeah, I know he has a way of getting under your skin when he asserts himself. Did you know though that what you give him when you react the way you do is exactly what he wants. In his mind if he pushes you to the point of talking stupid shit like wanting to fight, then he thinks he's won. Which he has in a sense because when you do that with anyone you've just given up control of yourself to them. You wore your button on your forehead and allowed them to push it.
So what that you can't put him on ignore? Do you need a button on a web site to control yourself? Do you really want to take the position you are so weak that you can't help but read his posts and respond? OR is the truth closer to being that you're mad that you can't hit him with some negative rep yourself and then hide from getting negative rep back by putting him on ignore?
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