NASA announces news conference on "an astrobiology finding", 2nd of December

[JEL]

@orb; my 2 cents; they should just simply reveal what the press-conference is about in the announcement itself, instead of keeping the topic secret and under 'information-embargo'. Just say what it's about from the beginning instead of letting people run amok with guessing.

 

[T.Neo]

a news conference about nothing interesting to public, but very meaningful to science" instead?

Potentially. Or they could make it public beforehand and go into it in detail at the actual news conference, to avoid hype.

Though I also feel that people are overblowing the scientific importance of this as well; biological arsenic use has been speculated before and cases of it are already known in nature, and this discovery is not, to my knowledge, making any major paradigm shift. And as a biology finding, it is not extraordinary or world changing, despite being novel and of interest. Arsenic subsituting phosphorous in very basic aspects of our biology is very interesting, although critics have asked for proof of whether arsenic actually subsitutes for phosphorous in the organism totally.

It does have astrobiology implications, yes, but how massively do they affect our potential search parameters? Arsenic is- in our system at least, a good deal less abundant than phosphorous. Is it that there are parts of space that are abundant in arsenic but severely lacking in phosphorous? Just the fact that phosphorous is a lighter chemical than arsenic makes me skeptical of that concept...

 

[Keatah]

Should they write in announcement "a news conference about nothing interesting to public, but very meaningful to science" instead?

Absolutely, yes, or something very much like that. Because that is the truth.

 

[Urwumpe]

I'm really annoyed with all the hype that nasa is trying to generate. When they find life they can take out the front page news in the Times or something like that. Till then, this is all prittle-prattle!

Sorry, but you are absolutely not understanding the magnitude of this discovery. It is nothing less than a revolution in genetics, biochemistry and abiogenesis. Something that is a serious candidate for a Nobel prize, because it really superinflated our knowledge of life. Bacteria eating arsenic had been known before, but this case is a life-form, that replaced Phosphorous in its chemistry by arsenic. It is not just tolerating arsenic, it adapts to it.

I can understand, that you fail to see the big picture. But NASA has all rights to make a press conference about it. Should NASA wait until they have discovered extraterrestrials, while every untalented pop wanna-be can have a press conference about the release of his first and only CD? A company that has achieved nothing, but has the right to make a press conference to claim publicly how it achieved many goals, except the important ones, that will not be mentioned in the PC?

I prefer a NASA, that does big press conferences for scientific results over a NASA that is forgotten until it is underfunded to death. And for making sure, NASA does not get forgotten, it has to remind the public that it exists and does more than just launch expensive astronauts to expensive space stations with expensive spacecraft that have expensive failures.

Another big picture... if the Shuttle wouldn't be such a lemon lately, NASA would not need to get successes elsewhere...but in this case, it is really worth the press conference, while the 30 year old black hole was a tiny bit less revolutionary compared to recent ESO research that is just mentioned in press releases.

 

[T.Neo]

Is it really adapting to it though, down on the cellular, mechanistic level? Or is it just incorperating it chemically?

I prefer a NASA, that does big press conferences for scientific results over a NASA that is forgotten until it is underfunded to death.

I dunno, I agree, but I also prefer a NASA that people support and don't get annoyed with.

 

[JEL]

Should NASA wait until they have discovered extraterrestrials, while every untalented pop wanna-be can have a press conference about the release of his first and only CD?

If NASA was a private company competing with pop-stars, on the exact same terms and conditions, I don't know how many albums they would sell. Even superb artists (like this one gem right here; Audra Lynn, which couldn't be over-hyped even if attempted) have hard times selling life-bearing quantities of albums in the current economic climate.

In a society where your product either floats or sinks, and you along with it, I fear NASA would end up homeless and sleeping in the street.
NASA is like the government; not enough people really wants it if they could actually opt-out (or wasn't automatically opted-in through forced taxation).
Put NASA up for public subscription-paid, or public donation-driven, existence and its space-program would quickly be reduced to 4th of july fireworks.

I prefer a NASA, that does big press conferences for scientific results over a NASA that is forgotten until it is underfunded to death. And for making sure, NASA does not get forgotten, it has to remind the public that it exists and does more than just launch expensive astronauts to expensive space stations with expensive spacecraft that have expensive failures.

NASA doesn't have an Osama-bin-laden to generate funding for them, like the CIA and military does, and they don't have sexy young women with lots of in-fighting to keep Joe-sixpack hooked, like "Next american top-model" does.
NASA's appeal is just not mainstream, and that's their real problem. The moon (and even the spaceshuttle program) was given to us by our fear of CCCP during the cold war (back when NASA and the Airforce were much closer together than they are now). NASA doesn't have that anymore. So the average citizen may have a hard time seeing a need for NASA digging for arsenic-eating bugs when they themselves struggle to meet their mortgages or pay for their children's education or overpriced private healthcare. Most average citizens appear to live their life beneath the blue skies and not beyond them, to NASA's disadvantage.

And if on top of that jane and joe citizen begin to feel that NASA reminds them of only hyper hot air then that will surely secure the final nail in NASA's coffin:

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf[/ame]




I just googled around a bit and found these 2 links which further link NASA with disappointment:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/theweek/20101202/cm_theweek/209992_20101202175500

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/b...ing-speculation-over-a-nasa-press-conference/

And we can all agree with them or not, or say the media is to blame for how they always wants aliens to attack to sell their 'news', the fact is that if enough people feel disappointment over NASA (even if it's for all the wrong reasons) then that will have an effect that most likely is not beneficial to NASA.

 

[T.Neo]

they don't have sexy young women with lots of in-fighting to keep Joe-sixpack hooked, like "Next american top-model" does.

I just had a great idea that might get us to Mars by 2030. :lol:

 

[Wishbone]

Last time I checked NASA's video gallery (today), they started using this technique (in the J-2X status update video).

 

[Ghostrider]

they don't have sexy young women with lots of in-fighting

Oh yeah [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak"]they do[/ame]...

 

[dbeachy1]

And there's my favorite [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Payette"]CAPCOM babe[/ame]. I enjoy listening to her voice while on-orbit.

 

[JEL]

Haha, yeah ok

 

[T.Neo]

I wouldn't call Lisa Nowak a "sexy young woman", rather a "crazy, scary woman". And while I'm sure Mrs Payette makes a good CAPCOM, she doesn't really have the potential to make NASA TV the most popular programming in America... :shifty:

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, NASA once also had Sally Ride... And todays astronauts aren't exactly of the old popular category of women who look like they are really tough men....

Especially Sunita Williams shouldn't be forgotten.

 

[dougkeenan]

Well, NASA once also had Sally Ride... And todays astronauts aren't exactly of the old popular category of women who look like they are really tough men....

Especially Sunita Williams shouldn't be forgotten.

Wouldn't surprise me to see Commander Whitson hand most men their ass.

eta unless you mean really LOOK like tough men, in which case she doesn't apply

 

[Urwumpe]

eta unless you mean really LOOK like tough men, in which case she doesn't apply

I won't say any names, but the first one is implied in astronaut, while I meant the latter.

 

[orb]

Interesting:

CBC News - Technology & Science: NASA's arsenic microbe science slammed:

{...}

In an interview Monday, Redfield said the methods used by the researchers were so crude that any arsenic they detected was likely from contamination. There is no indication that the researchers purified the DNA to remove arsenic that might have been sticking to the outside of the DNA or the gel the DNA was embedded in, she added. Normally, purifying the DNA is a standard step, Redfield said: "It's a kit, it costs $2, it takes 10 minutes."

She also questioned why the researchers analyzed the DNA while it was still in the gel, making the results more difficult to interpret: "No molecular biologist would ever do that."

Redfield also disagreed with the paper's conclusion that the bacteria had to rely on arsenic to build molecules such as DNA because there wasn't enough phosphate (a form of phosphorus) available in the samples with the lowest levels. Her arithmetic showed that in fact, there was enough phosphate to account for the amount of bacteria that grew.

"That shocked me," she said.

Redfield added that there was actually very little arsenic in the DNA of bacteria grown in an environment high in arsenic and low in phosphorus. In fact, the amount was only twice that of the cells grown without arsenic: "That's a level of difference that could be easily explained by very minor contamination."

{...}

 

[Keatah]

Any man that looks like a woman, and any woman that looks like a man -- is just plain wrong. And its even worse when they do it on purpose!

 

[Wishbone]

Please don't discount the original research paper though. The invectives thrown in an interview are bad taste and may be related to a personal feud.

 

[Urwumpe]

Please don't discount the original research paper though. The invectives thrown in an interview are bad taste and may be related to a personal feud.

I would say you are right. Contaminations are an easy word, but such contaminations have been part of biology for over a decade, making it just likely that Bacteria could use arsenic instead of phosphorous.

This time, the evidence is better: Just without going into chemical details, it focused on the reproduction of the bacteria. If you would assume that the bacteria used only the Phosphorus that they already contained, there would be a large gap in form of unexplained mass: The bacteria must have used something out of their environment for thriving, and this can only be arsenic.

Of course, the X-Ray scattering of the DNA would be the ultimate evidence... I am sure it will come now.

This interview sounds mostly like hurt ego. It completely misses the point of the other study, suggesting that the interviewed didn't even read the paper.

There are some parallels in the unqualified media campaign of the critics, that should be known from other scientific events...for example Darwin or Alfred Wegener... It took a while until tectonics replaced pole shifts.

 

[tblaxland]

The Guardian has useful story tracker up here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/dec/02/nasa-life-form-bacteria-arsenic