<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12pt"><DIV>On the other hand, I would expect arsenic to be incorporated into tissues. I don't see anything earth-shattering about this finding. It's not like the central theory of biochemistry up to this point was something that utterly and definitively ruled out arsenic. In fact, to me, not having arsenic in the biochemistry of most Earth life seems more like an accident of history.</DIV>
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<DIV>Are you being serious here too? Did you completely rule out slightly different biochemistries? Were you estimating the number of places life might arise or spread to based on estimates of how many places might have plentiful arsenic? And what were your estimates? Have you now doubled the number of such places? Tripled them? Etc.?</DIV>
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<DIV>To me, this is like some researcher found a life form that can survive and thrive is brine that's 1% more saline than the previous record holder and then holding off on announcing it for a big conference as if this were the equivalent of finding life on Mars. (Granted, all of us should have guessed that any really big find would be announced in short order or leaked. This sounds almost like a promotional stunt to justify funding or keep NASA in the news than anything else. I mean here the way the story was played up -- not the actual find.)</DIV>
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<DIV>Regards,</DIV>
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<DIV>Dan</DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">From:</SPAN></B> spike <spike66@att.net><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">To:</SPAN></B> rafal@smigrodzki.org; ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Sent:</SPAN></B> Thu, December 2, 2010 9:42:09 PM<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Subject:</SPAN></B> Re: [ExI] NASA tease on SETI find<BR></FONT><BR>... On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki<BR>Subject: Re: [ExI] NASA tease on SETI find<BR><BR>The most anticlimactic aspect is that the bacteria are not a separate highly<BR>divergent clade like Archaea but rather members of our own tree of life that<BR>adapted to opportunistically incorporate arsenic in their DNA...Rafal<BR><BR>2010/12/2 Dan <<A href="mailto:dan_ust@yahoo.com" ymailto="mailto:dan_ust@yahoo.com">dan_ust@yahoo.com</A>>:<BR>> Yes, like so much
about NASA: big hype over almost nothing.<BR>><BR>> Dan<BR>> From: "<A href="mailto:ablainey@aol.com" ymailto="mailto:ablainey@aol.com">ablainey@aol.com</A>" <<A href="mailto:ablainey@aol.com" ymailto="mailto:ablainey@aol.com">ablainey@aol.com</A>><BR>> ...<BR>> Complete anticlimax...<BR><BR>I am surprised by the disappointment expressed by several posters. This was<BR>a hellll of a find. I wouldn't expect anything to incorporate arsenic into<BR>the tissues. This opens up possibilities for the panspermia notion, as well<BR>as causing me personally to increase my own estimate of the number of star<BR>systems that support life.<BR><BR>spike</DIV></DIV></div><br>
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