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Dec. 2nd, 2010 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redneckgaijinYes, I've heard about the new arsenic bacteria.
And I, as a science fiction fan, am not impressed.
So a bacterium substitutes one element with a chemically similar one in its DNA. Big whoop. Scientists have postulated the possibility of substituting carbon with silicon- a much longer-odds prospect, since silicon isn't as reactive and requires much more energy to make and break chemical chains when it does. And to be blunt, there's absolutely no reason why a genetic code has to be made up of any particular set of elements at all- so long as they are reactive, form chains capable of carrying complex data, and common in their environment.
I remember first reading about anaerobic bacteria in high school. (That's bacteria, or often called "archaeobacteria", which don't require oxygen for their metabolic process- indeed most produce oxygen as a waste product.) The books and magazines still touted that as a recent discovery which revolutionized our understanding of life both on Earth and as it could possibly exist on other worlds. The hysteria of the past day or so over Bacterium And Old Lace sounds quite similar- and, I'm pretty sure, is equally overrated.
In both cases, the discovery says much, much less about what might be Out There than about the preconceptions scientists fail to question. Life Out There is nothing more than a guessing game, and likely to remain so for the rest of my lifetime at least. When playing such a guessing game, it should be remembered that there is no reason why the rules life obeys on Earth should be obeyed anywhere else. Even Einstein cautioned that his general theory of relativity only stood upon observations from one frame of reference- Earth. He was willing to leave room for doubt on his explanation for how the whole universe worked- yet, apparently, NASA scientists are dumbfounded by one little family of bacteria not from Mars or Europa or Alpha Centauri or Mr. Spock's toilet bowl, but from Mono Lake, California- dumbfounded because it doesn't obey the rules they think it should.
About the only thing this gives me cause to consider, really, is this: it makes it all the more UNlikely that any alien life would be non-toxic to us, or vice versa. If the arsenic bug had given rise to, say, all plant life, while animal life continued from the standard phosphorus DNA composition, I doubt either side would have got much beyond the simplest multicellular forms. And think how extreme the cases might get: a First Contact meeting in which all the members of both species' meeting parties died within an hour of participating in an Earth-style handshake that was toxic for all concerned.
Or not. Just as there's no reason why alien life should obey our rules, there's also no reason why it should reject them all either. It might be that Romulan ale lies in our future after all- that is, outside sci-fi hotel room parties.
Other than that obscure bit of thought material, it's entirely overblown, and it could stop now please.
And I, as a science fiction fan, am not impressed.
So a bacterium substitutes one element with a chemically similar one in its DNA. Big whoop. Scientists have postulated the possibility of substituting carbon with silicon- a much longer-odds prospect, since silicon isn't as reactive and requires much more energy to make and break chemical chains when it does. And to be blunt, there's absolutely no reason why a genetic code has to be made up of any particular set of elements at all- so long as they are reactive, form chains capable of carrying complex data, and common in their environment.
I remember first reading about anaerobic bacteria in high school. (That's bacteria, or often called "archaeobacteria", which don't require oxygen for their metabolic process- indeed most produce oxygen as a waste product.) The books and magazines still touted that as a recent discovery which revolutionized our understanding of life both on Earth and as it could possibly exist on other worlds. The hysteria of the past day or so over Bacterium And Old Lace sounds quite similar- and, I'm pretty sure, is equally overrated.
In both cases, the discovery says much, much less about what might be Out There than about the preconceptions scientists fail to question. Life Out There is nothing more than a guessing game, and likely to remain so for the rest of my lifetime at least. When playing such a guessing game, it should be remembered that there is no reason why the rules life obeys on Earth should be obeyed anywhere else. Even Einstein cautioned that his general theory of relativity only stood upon observations from one frame of reference- Earth. He was willing to leave room for doubt on his explanation for how the whole universe worked- yet, apparently, NASA scientists are dumbfounded by one little family of bacteria not from Mars or Europa or Alpha Centauri or Mr. Spock's toilet bowl, but from Mono Lake, California- dumbfounded because it doesn't obey the rules they think it should.
About the only thing this gives me cause to consider, really, is this: it makes it all the more UNlikely that any alien life would be non-toxic to us, or vice versa. If the arsenic bug had given rise to, say, all plant life, while animal life continued from the standard phosphorus DNA composition, I doubt either side would have got much beyond the simplest multicellular forms. And think how extreme the cases might get: a First Contact meeting in which all the members of both species' meeting parties died within an hour of participating in an Earth-style handshake that was toxic for all concerned.
Or not. Just as there's no reason why alien life should obey our rules, there's also no reason why it should reject them all either. It might be that Romulan ale lies in our future after all- that is, outside sci-fi hotel room parties.
Other than that obscure bit of thought material, it's entirely overblown, and it could stop now please.
