NASA announced today that they have discovered a new form of life that changes our understanding of the elements required for life. Unfortunately, The new life form NASA discovered is not extraterrestrial, it was found in California, nevertheless, the discovery is still very exciting. The life form that NASA has discovered has a very interesting and important difference about the structure of it's DNA, it has arsenic instead of phosphorus like all other life we know. This is so exciting and important because it means life can exist in even greater variety than we believed previously, and exist in places we used to think impossible. It was thought until now that there were 6 elements essential for life: Carbon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorous, and Sulfur, with this discovery of an organism with arsenic in place of phosphors it can now be inferred that other elements could be swapped as well, silicon for carbon for instance. This vastly increases the possible places to find life. We have been looking for planets like ours to find extraterrestrial life on, planets that have the elements we thought critical for the existence of life, not anymore. Life could exist in vastly different ways than we have imagined. There maybe life forms out there we don't even recognize as life. on planets hot enough for rocks to be liquid, there could be a silicon based life form that looks more like a rock to us than it does something alive. Oh the possibilities!
for more information read the NASA press release.
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