Thursday, December 2, 2010

New Life in Mono Lake


Mono Lake, California

Copyright © 2009 Chris Bensen. All rights reserved.


NASA has found new life in Mono Lake! It isn't like they haven't found new life there before, but this is different. Apparently this bacteria uses arsenic instead of phosphorus for it's DNA.

Mono Lake is one of my favorite places. I took the photo at the top of this post there years ago. It is a stitched from 12 photos in the late fall.

Update: This isn't quite as exciting as the news was leading to believe (big surprise). After reading this article it turns out they put the bacteria in an environment containing high levels of arsenic (which Mono Lake does contain) and reduced the phosphorus and eventually the bacteria substituted arsenic for phosphorus.

3 comments:

Xepol said...

It's like the school yard bully that knocks you down and pushes your face in the dirt until you eat it.

Honestly, it sounds less like science and more like acting out childhood angst.

I'm not 100% sure they've proved what they set out to achieve.

Arnaud said...

When will Mono Lake support Silverlight 5?

LDS said...

Oh, that show that the Mono ecosystem can live only under alien conditions.

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