Discovered in the poisonous Mono Lake, California, this bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible. While she and other scientists theorized that this could be possible, this is the first discovery. The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don’t have to be like planet Earth.
I’VE ONLY BEEN FUCKING SAYING THIS FOR YEARS.
I mean, there are so many arguments for “no aliens” out there that hinge entirely on the fact that Earth is a rare case. So fucking what if Earth is a rare case. Firstly, the universe is massive. “Rare case” means absolutely nothing; it’d be absolutely astounding, from a perspective of probability, if Earth was literally the only planet with its particular qualities in the entire place. Secondly, the fact that Earth has produced a diverse range of living beings does not mean that living beings can only be produced by a planet like Earth. And yet people have so much goddamn difficulty imagining that life could ever possibly exist without sticking to the narrow formula that happened to work on one single speck of dirt in a near-infinite universe. It is the most self-centered viewpoint imaginable.
At least the science is behind me now. God.
This is amazing.
WOWOWOW.