Planet Firsts

Big Wave and I were watching some Planet Earth Sunday night - Mountains (awesome) and Caves (kind of gross, actually) - and were remarking how the script loves superlatives and the mention of filming/wildlife firsts. "The most secret cave" stood out. So did the litany of firsts that occurred in the filming of the snow leopard hunt. Admittedly, the snow leopard business is ridiculously awesome, but honestly shut up and let me watch the cat try to take down the goat. Even you, David Attenborough.

For a proud list of all of Planet Earth's firsts, check it.

Rare earth not so rare

This map is almost impossible to see, but all those dots represent deposits of rare earth. Not so rare now, are ya? The NYT had a short article on where these inputs crucial to everything from color televisions to electric vehicles are located around the world. Despite their global prevalence, the Chinese have almost cornered the market essentially because they do not give a F about what the nasty extraction process does to the environment.

Aliens!

Okay okay, alien bacteria. But still...aliens! Scientists have discovered a new life form whose make-up does not match that of any other life form on earth (see details below). The tiny organisms come equipped with microscopic spaceships, death rays and anal probes. Look out corn field owners, you guys are usually the first to go. Come to think of it, since these guys are so small, their tiny little aircraft could have been hovering above every major city for the last decade firing tiny little beams down and we wouldn't have even known. They're probably pissed because we looked a lot smaller from far away. Seriously, it's a cool news story and the details from someone who has actually done some research are below.

From gizmodo:

NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn't share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. This changes everything.

At their conference today, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon will announce that they have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today. Instead of using phosphorus, the bacteria uses arsenic. All life on Earth is made of six components: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same.

But not this one. This one is completely different. Discovered in the poisonous Mono Lake, California, this bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible. While she and other scientists theorized that this could be possible, this is the first discovery. The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don't have to be like planet Earth.