After finishing my last blog, as if on cue, I read NASA was about to announce Something Big about the hunt for alien life.
NASA was holding a press conference. Rumours were circulating – have they at last found little green men?
Well, no.
They have discovered a bacteria that deviates from the “rules of life” we had previously understood, by substituting arsenic for some of the phosphorus in its DNA.
Not little green men, but NASA achieved the generally impossible task of making science headline news.
(There are plenty of reports about this fantastic discovery, written much more elegantly than I can – see links below).
At first I wondered whether NASA had over-hyped this discovery. It is certainly amazing research with far-reaching implications – “awesome” as the Americans would say. But building it up as a breakthrough in the search for extra-terrestrials sounded a risky strategy to me……
But it seems to have paid off. The discovery is getting huge amounts of press attention, much more than a normal press release announcing the discovery of a new type of bacteria, however “new” it may be.
So brilliant work NASA, both in scientific and headline-grabbing terms.
For more reports see:
And some blogs…
Of Arsenic and Aliens: The Loom
//Esther Crooks
