The Nasa Announcement (page 3)

DagothUr

This discovery leads to one hypothesis: life in the Universe in much more exotic than it appeared in StarTrek, where 90% of all intelligent species were humanoid in appearance.

BurnTheShips

1) So, what other elements can be swapped in and out of DNA?

There aren't many discrete elements in the 4 nucleobases that make up DNA...just oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen. These are arranged in varying sequences of 4 nucleobases (adenine, guanine, thymine, cytosine) to make up one DNA "bit", or nucleotide. The 4 nucleobase "bits", however, are terminated and attached to other "bits" using phosphate bonds. So in total, that is just 4 elements.

2) Can a bacteria based on arsenic, or some other element, evolve into a higher life form? If so, what would it look like / act like / be like?

I don't see why not.

If so, what would it look like / act like / be like?

Here is what I am hoping for....

BTS

Mad Sweeney

I believe it is still likely that 99.999% of species humanity interacts within the "Star Trek" time frame will be humanoid in appearance because gaining the ability to communicate with such different and diverse life forms is going to take a lot longer than a few hundred years. That is, unless a sort of common language has already been established and it is taught to us by others. A sort of telepathy? A mathematical language? Maybe.

BurnTheShips

Sorry, for lecturing, I'm a fucking geek. I love this stuff.

BTS

tec

I have a question, and I never watched, so I'm going based on what you've all said here.

Could this bacteria (based on arsenic) have adapted and evolved to be based on this, perhaps because it fed off it? I get that this is huge, I'm just thinking about other possibilities. (and I don't mean to knock the alien life parade, that would be cool too)

Tammy

Mad Sweeney

Tec, even if it evolved here on earth (which at this point is as likely as any other hypothesis in my mind) the implications are that similar life could have evolved in places we haven't been looking. If we have been limiting our search to places that have phosphorous then that limitation has hindered the search for life and can be discarded. There may be (and I don't really know, I'm grasping here) moons of the gas giants that we have previously ignored once we saw there was no phosphorous there, or once we saw a huge abundance of arsenic, or for other reasons.

This widens the bounds to the entire system and the entire galaxy. Leave no stone unturned.

tec

This widens the bounds to the entire system and the entire galaxy. Leave no stone unturned.

Ah... gotcha. That IS exciting :)

Tammy

zoiks

Hmm. PZ Myers offers his take on it... it's still very cool, but maybe a little less earth-shattering than I had thought.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/its_not_an_arsenic-based_life.php

Satanus

Isn't it just another adaptation? You know, an evolutionary process?

S

The Nasa Announcement

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