
Alien life form ‘is here on Earth’ - alexandros
http://skymania.com/wp/2010/11/alien-life-form-is-here-on-earth.html/
======
NathanKP
This 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
This 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.

~~~
Groxx
Especially 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.

------
gort
It 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)

~~~
daeken
> * (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.

~~~
jerf
You seem to think the definition of life is going to get sharper in the
future. I'd say all signs point towards it getting a lot fuzzier instead; what
will die is the idea that it is a binary yes/no instead of yet another
continuum. Is a sufficiently advanced AI alive? Well, some yes, some no.

~~~
daeken
Actually, I don't think it'll get much sharper, if at all, largely for the
reason you mentioned. I think that what we consider to be "alive" will largely
grow more fuzzy, but what isn't alive will be sharper. I don't find it hard to
believe that a computer running advanced software (e.g. an advanced AI) is
alive, but I find the idea that a piece of inert data (a virus) is alive to be
counterintuitive and wrong.

------
roadnottaken
There'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
That 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
This is what "intelligent design" proponents are trying to prove all the time,
isn't it?

~~~
michaelfeathers
True, but if found a striking example of "you can't get there from here" would
marginalize their efforts.

------
mebassett
bit 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>)

~~~
alexandros
I 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
If 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
"2) Do they appear to be subject to natural selection?"

why would they not be subject to natural selection?

~~~
Maciek416
I 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
If 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
This 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
Not 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
Some bacteria and viri use RNA. But I guess that doesn't really count as being
different enough from DNA.

------
D0rkvsMaximvs
Unless it's a leggy brunette with green skin, I don't wanna hear about it.

------
samstokes
OT, 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>)

~~~
presidentender
The 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
+1 for "dissolves the geese".

~~~
presidentender
That's an exaggeration, but it is extremely hostile.

------
jff
Well, 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
Living 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.

------
akkartik
_"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>

------
colkassad
Is 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?

~~~
ceejayoz
Of 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.

------
bediger
Some biologists have made a case for DNA replication evolving twice,
independently:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC148579/pdf/27338...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC148579/pdf/273389.pdf)

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>

------
ANH
I 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>

------
InclinedPlane
As 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?!

------
iwr
Since 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
Or maybe the found a portal into another dimension containing giant tentacles
floating in the sky.

~~~
michaelfeathers
Again?

------
floatingatoll
This article title is missing a question mark.

------
mousebender
This article belongs on Digg, not HN.

------
kin
Reading this article was like watching a 2-hour special on the Discovery
Channel about a new discovery that turned out to be a mistake

