Jul 6 2007
From The Space Library
The NRC published its report, The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems, in which the authors called for scientists to expand their search for extra-terrestrial life to include “weird life”—organisms that lack DNA or other molecules that compose known life forms. The NASA-sponsored committee’s investigation concluded that life in forms different from those on Earth is possible and that good reason exists to suspect that various types of chemistry could potentially support life. The report suggested that, not only should NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) support research into weird life in the universe, but scientists should also search for weird life on Earth. The committee found that the generally accepted fundamental requirements for life—a liquid water biosolvent, a carbon-based metabolism, a molecular system capable of evolution, and the ability to exchange energy with the environment—are not the only means of supporting the phenomena scientists recognize as life. The committee noted that, “nothing would be more tragic in the American exploration of space than to encounter alien life and fail to recognize it.”
Carl Zimmer, “Scientists Urge a Search for Life Not as We Know It,” New York Times, 7 July 2007; National Research Council, “Life Elsewhere in Solar System Could Be Different From Life as We Know It,” news release, 6 July 2007, http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=11919 (accessed 4 June 2010).
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