NASA held the Net’s curiosity hostage in and around the study of a microbe that turns our preconceived notion about alien life forms on its big green head. Scientists observed that a bacteria known as GFAJ-1, scraped from a lake in Northern California, was able to thrive on arsenic, which is deadly to humans and other life on earth. The microbe was able to subsist on arsenic instead of phosphorous, one of six chemical elements considered essential for life. The discovery opens up new possibilities about where alien life forms may exist. They could even be right under our nose.
