Dec 022010
NASA’s big news: bacteria that use arsenic instead of phosphorus.
Meh.
It’s interesting news, to be sure, but certainly overhyped. It’s counter-productive to try to make a big public deal out of something that assuredly *will* *not* interest the public.
Now that NASA is out of the “boldly going forward” business, they have to hype whatever they can to try to seem relevant.
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And now people are starting to critique even those results.
For starters, bacteria using arsenic isn’t all that new; a quick Goggle check showed the idea went back at least as far as 1994:
http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20030519arsenic0519p2.asp
Also, the new bacteria still had phosphorus in them when they died; so whether they had completely replaced phosphorus with arsenic is open to question.
It’s somewhat reminiscent of NASA’s harping about the ion engines on Deep Space One…although the SERT 2 spacecraft not only tried out ion engines in space clean back in 1970, but operated them intermittently till 1981… and the ones on SERT were nuclear isotope powered instead of relying on solar arrays.
http://xkcd.com/829/
That was so disappointing. NASA truly lacks any degree of self-promotion.
Now if they could find one that uses old lace they’d have a movie.