Inorganic life?

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Inorganic life?

Wonder what kind of particles, the articles doesn't say.


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Sorry, just dredged up this

Sorry, just dredged up this thread and now I am curious....BGH?  Cpt Pineapple?  Y#5?  Care to offer so insight to the scientifically challenged?

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This is a very interesting

This is a very interesting article. For years we have been looking for life elsewhere in the universe and looking into the origins of life on earth, this finding gives new avenues to pursue when conducting the search.

The astrobiology community in recent years has been reviewing their definition of life and realize that when scanning the cosmos for 'life' it may not necessarily be carbon based life as we see here on earth. There may be organisms that have very different metabolism processes and very different molecular structures comprising their make-up.

The article points out just another avenue that has been discovered regarding possible life and a different path organic life on earth may have taken in it's origination.

Here is another version of the article with some visual illustration.


From Astrobiology Magazine:

'It might be life, Jim...'

Based on a Institute of Physics news release

Physicists Discover Inorganic Dust with Lifelike Qualities

Could extraterrestrial life be made of corkscrew-shaped particles of interstellar dust? Intriguing new evidence of life-like structures that form from inorganic substances in space are revealed in the New Journal of Physics. The findings hint at the possibility that life beyond Earth may not necessarily use carbon-based molecules as its building blocks. They also point to a possible new explanation for the origin of life on Earth.

Researchers have demonstrated the formation of microscopic strands of helical structures in plasma clouds. The researchers say that these structures undergo changes that are normally associated with biological molecules like DNA and proteins - such as dividing and forming copies of the original structure.
Credit: Tsytovich, V.N. et al. 2007
Many of the ingredients for life as we know it formed in outer space. The Earth formed from star dust, and later meteorites and comets delivered even more materials to our planet. But scientists are still unsure which molecules played the most important roles in life's origin.
Credit: European Space Agency



All life on Earth has a similar DNA-based chemistry, but could there be other forms of life beyond our planet that we are not aware of?
Credit: NASA


He adds that the plasma conditions needed to form these helical structures are common in outer space. However, plasmas can also form under more down to Earth conditions such as the point of a lightning strike. The researchers hint that perhaps an inorganic form of life emerged on the primordial Earth, which then acted as the template for the more familiar organic molecules we know today.