“Until now, the idea has been that life on Earth must be composed of at least the six elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur and phosphorus – no example had ever been found that violates this golden rule of biochemistry.”
Presumably, life not caring what its chemical constituents are is good news for religion. Story.
December 3 2010 at 10:40 am
Everything is good and bad news for religion. On the one hand, it just goes to show the power of life, eh? God’s light shines in mysterious places. On the other, it’s a problem for those people who like to see the whole natural world as having been built as a playground for humanity: how do arsenic-based bacteria help us?
December 3 2010 at 12:19 pm
This isn’t about the power of life in a soggy way. As in it appears here, and then there. The discovery simply tends to push the essence of life outside the chemical realm altogether. We’d known about other extremophiles, but this takes matters a step further.
At least, that is what religious people will start to say.