The Daily Word 12.01.10: NASA's Big Announcement, Lobos Fight At Lotus, Happy Chanukah!

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Ok, remember how someone noticed Silicon was right below Carbon on the periodic table, can therefore form the same kinds of bonds, and the next thing you know people were speculating on silicon-based life? Well, the same idea came up for replacing Phosphorus with Arsenic. Except someone didn't so much find Arsenic-based life, as they say they manages to create it, by feeding Arsenic to some bacteria. They say it successfully adapted and incorporated the Arsenic into its chemistry.

And if they're right, then that's very cool, but it's Just Another "extremophile." Well, maybe not just another; it's yet another dimension (really basic, basic chemistry stuff, rather than finding stuff way deep underground or at the bottom of the sea or living inside of glaciers) to the weird ways life can adapt, but it's also artificial rather than natural. It lowers the bar on how hard it is for life to adapt, with the usual implications that has, for how easy it might be for life to bootstrap.

It looks like we're still creeping up on the aliens. Their existence just keeps getting more and more believable/possible, and yet for some reason, we keep on failing to find any actual evidence of them being out there. It's just that whenever (if?) the evidence does eventually turn up, fewer and fewer people will say, "No, that's impossible. Your telescope must be broken, because that planet totally sucks for life."