Aliens. For real this time.

[Moonliner]

Well pooh. It's still cool and all but not quite what I was hoping for.

While it shows life can adapt to a wider range of environment it does nothing to address the critical issue of can life develop on it's own in these environments.

[Moonliner]

On the other hand, I'm glad to see we are already looking for a way to exploit this critter.

[Alex]

I thought something seemed strange when I was in Mono Lake last year.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Moonliner

While it shows life can adapt to a wider range of environment it does nothing to address the critical issue of can life develop on it's own in these environments.

I wouldn't say it does nothing. The prevailing assumption was that life, whether adapted or developed-anew, could never possibly exist outside of the specific chemical components we know. No way, no how, not even worth looking at. While there's still nothing that shows it could come together from a primordial soup that doesn't contain phosphorous, at least we now, to some degree, can see that, yes, something which we would define, and recognize, as "life" can exist without the exact same set of chemicals. That's a pretty important leap.

[Alex]

Here's one of my Mono Lake photos. If you look closely I think you can see some of these guys landing their alien ship just to the left of that little tufa outcropping.

[wendybeth]

I vaguely remember an article with Carl Sagan as the interviewee, and he discussed what type of life we might expect to find elsewhere in the Universe. He was (obviously) very doubtful that exactly the same set of circumstances that set up life for carbon based forms on Earth might exist (although, in an almost infinite Universe, I don't know why he would dismiss such possibilities, but I digress...) but he did say that he thought it was possible that organisms could develop along different chemical lines. So, I scanned the above articles, but didn't see if they thought these organisms had adapted to this environment, or if they were of this environment. (Again, a quick scan, but still- if they were the product of their environment, then that seems like it would be pretty interesting stuff).

[CoasterMatt]

So, I wonder how this will affect the "Save Mono Lake" campaign?

[Morrigoon]

Reminds me of that Star Trek: TNG episode with the glowing silicate-based life forms that called the crew "ugly bags of mostly water"

[Betty]

Seems odd to me that no one thought this could happen. The universe is such a big place. To think that "life" can only happen when it's like us seems really egotistical and closed minded.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Betty

Seems odd to me that no one thought this could happen. The universe is such a big place. To think that "life" can only happen when it's like us seems really egotistical and closed minded.

That's a very poor understanding of how science works.

Clearly the biological community thought it could happen - or else they wouldn't have been spending time trying to prove it could. Until now, though, there was no evidence to prove it possible. Now there is.

Yay science.