The Definition of "Discovery"

I have to admit, before I get into this, that I am a little jaded. I got excited, like everyone else, by Kottke's implication that yesterday's NASA announcement might be the discovery of E.T. Then, when it turned out to be a horrifying well-performed press conference that was a strange concoction of part roundtable, part lecture, and part press release...I must admit that I had furrowed brows. Maybe even a scowl.

That said, I think we need to discuss whether or not it is a huge misnomer to call Wolfe-Simon's GFAJ-1 bacteria a "discovery." Let us pretend, for a moment, that I took an algae, maybe some monocell from the chlorophyta division, and added DNA for a green phosphorescent protein. Presto, change-o, I've got glowing algae. Should I announce I have "discovered glowing algae"? Or would a better word be "created"? Or suppose I took a flu virus, and weakened it until it was harmless in terms of symptoms, but still provided the immune system with a response that would give a host later immunity to the same flu virus at full strength (this is a common method of making annual flu vaccines). Should I announce I've discovered a "cure for flu" or should I say I've "created" a flu vaccine?
The point I am driving towards is that while the ability of a living organism to seemingly thrive in the absence of phosphorous is truly amazing, the fact that it was not a naturally occurring phenomena makes the idea of it being a "discovery" less certain.

Extremophiles - bacteria and microorganisms that seem to thrive in awful conditions - are prevalent all across this planet. From sulfur-loving organisms living on volcanic vents on the pitch black seafloor, to algae growing in hot springs in Yosemite, to whole ecosystems living under the ice in Antarctica, you name the place...there are bugs there, delightfully thriving, pushing the limits of what a "hostile environment" really is.
And each of these organisms leads to the obvious conclusion that life on other planets might not need a perfect oasis of nutrients, water, and sunlight in order to exist.
But TAE wonders: though life can exist in a hellish, arsenic-laden place like Mona Lake, California - can it also evolve there?
It'd take a better biologist than I to tell you which came first...the thermophiles or the rest of us, but go far enough back, to the Primordial Ooze, and you have to eventually find "The First" which spread into life on Earth.
I think what we should be focusing on here is not the fact that "The First" used Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, Sulfur, and Phosphorous as its essential 6, but rather that The First appeared precisely when the Earth was at a chemical state conducive to it's appearance. And that chemical state included the most biogenic chemical compounds, which were created from the most biogenic atoms available.

Expand this view to other worlds, or their moons (like Titan), and while the cocktail of chemicals on that moon does not necessarily, in my view, eliminate the possibility that life might evolve there, the state of those chemicals as well as the state of the moon itself lead me to believe that Titan is a lifeless hydrocarbon-laden rock. I'd like to believe in methanogenic mice, skittering around pools of acetylene and playing on the frozen water rocks strewn all about...but I just can't see that such a place would allow for the development of a First.

So what of this arsenic-eating bacteria "discovered" at Mono Lake? Sadly, I have to believe that the fact that it needed laboratory coaxing to achieve phosphorous-free status actually weakens the chances of E.T. evolving on an arsenic world.


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