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Originally Posted by Esuohlim
So wait, was the exceptional discovery the black hole or the arsenic life forms?
Because one was revealed three weeks later, but is WAY more exceptional  |
MLE hinted this already (cant see her article), but this discovery isn't really all that exceptional - at least not in the manner it's being represented. there seems to be some sort of misconception going around that this microorganism is in someway alien, which it is not. the discovery also isn't of the organism itself, it's of what the organism is capable of doing. the idea behind the study was basically that the scientists could culture this bacteria, isolate it and manipulate it in order to prove a point. the point was that life could exist under conditions that are different than what we previously thought.
basically, we search for alien life by seeking out the conditions that we know can support life and we deduct the candidates that do not foster these conditions. so, by expanding the conditions we've also expanded our search. that was the only alien/space relation! i don't find it all that exciting personally, all we've done is broaden a search that was already huge to begin with. which isn't exactly getting us closer.
& back to the original point, this is just as disappointing as the other news release and the trend is getting annoying. NASA is purposefully irresponsible with adjectives in order to attract interest/attention.