Now That's Interesting...

Not news: Scientists discover a new genus of bacteria.

News: ...so far found exclusively in NASA and European Space Agency clean-rooms thousands of miles apart.

1 comment:

douglas said...

I don't know if I agree with their conclusory assessment:

"Ultimately, the discovery of bacteria as resilient as T. phoenicis just goes to show how robust life is. The finding suggests that “once life originates on a planet, it has great adaptive power and can survive a great variety of environmental stresses,” says Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University, who wasn’t involved in the study of the new genus. “The $1-million question, of course, is: Under which conditions life can originate in the first place?”"

It seems to hold that life is robust and so once started has good odds to survive. Perhaps it takes life as robust as life on Earth (which does indeed continue to amaze) to even have a chance at surviving long enough to develop at all, or it may be not long for the universe given all the obstacles to survival.

Even if life started elsewhere in the Universe, it's still possible that we are the exceptional case. Part of me certainly wants to believe that.