Comments on Cosmic Imperative

It relies on water, but not oxygen? Ah, bad science journalism...

What makes you post in psuedointellecutal babble Charles?

"Imperiative?"

It's like going to kiss a pretty girl and seeing a sore on her lip.

Where are the boobies?

As a child I was always facinated by the way a fish could be reanimated after freezing. Later I thought frozen comets could carry life to the far reaches of the universe. When I recently heard scientists talking about stars forming planets, our own solar system seemed a common occurence with planets forming in roughly the same ways around endless other stars. These common formations would seem to have a good chance of forming planets in "habitable" zones where life could flourish. It seems the universe, too, is bent on life's survival. Even the molecules in our bodies were formed inside stars. Now if you extrapolate time, living things on earth have a set of common DNA. A single blueprint that can be varied in endless ways to make living things survive varied enviroments. To me, it seems without life there wouldn't be a "reason" for the universe to exist, even though I guess it would. But who would care?

Wow - wonder what Chuckster sees in THAT picture?

That's kind of a bullshit question ("what is this imperative").

You're basically saying, "Gosh, life is so prevalent. What makes it want to be so?" You may as well--equally logically--say, "Gosh, non-living matter is so prevalent. It must have some imperative that makes it want to be so!"

I'm a UW grad student in the departments of Microbiology and Astrobiology (yes, Astrobiology). There are a couple things that I think should be corrected here. The "bug" is actually a bacterium, not an insect. This is an important distinction because there are lots of bacteria that don't use oxygen, some living inside of our own digestive tract. Oxygen appeared on the planet 2.4-2.7 billion years ago (about a billion years after life first appeared) BECAUSE a bacterium produced it as a waste product (the same bacterium that now lives inside of plant cells and performs photosynthesis - look up cyanobateria, if you're interested). The interesting thing about Desulforudis audaxviator is not that it doesn't use oxygen for metabolism, but that it is the only species in its habitat (the only known case of a single-species habitat). Also it's pretty awesome that it lives 3km underground. Sorry, if I'm being a downer. It's great that you're reporting on science in general.