NASA announces find of new type of life

NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey today announced they have found life that works differently from the rest of Earth life. At Yosemite National Park, Dr. Felisa Wolfe-Simon found a unique life-form that uses arsenic in its basic DNA structure. Arsenic is toxic to everything else on the planet. NASA’s “Team Titan” find this very interested in this finding, since they are planning a mission to one of Saturn’s biggest moons — the moon Titan has a methane atmosphere and is one of the most likely places to find life elsewhere in the solar system. NASA probes to Titan have already detected what may be the tell-tale chemical signatures of a methane-based life.

“It’s a paradigm shift” Dimitar Sasselov, an astrobiologist at Harvard University is reported as saying of today’s announcment. “The possibility that Earth life biochemistry is not universal is a transformational concept. It fills the search [for alien creatures] with optimism.”

Short URL: http://www.jurn.org/news/?p=310

Posted by jonahjameson on Dec 2 2010. Filed under Nature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry