So everyone chill out. It does raise interesting questions for alien life-hunters, however
Biologists have isolated a bacterium that can use a deadly chemical in place of one of life’s key building blocks, in a finding NASA says could have major implications for astrobiology and our understanding of life on Earth.
In the study, researchers examined a bacteria living in a very salty and arsenic-heavy lake in northeastern California, not far from Yosemite National Park. It is not a space alien, nor is it “new life” — it’s an existing bacteria that lives in a difficult environment and was deliberately manipulated in a lab.