Hi, Russ! One reason it is important is that it demonstrates that "life as we know it" has a broader definition that previously thought.
It means that if we find an earth-like planet out there, except with more arsenic than phosphorus -- in other words, a poisonous-to-us planet -- we might still find life on that planet. The number of planets that might support life-as-we-think-we-know-it just increased significantly. ~~James On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 11:14 PM, Russ Abbott <russ.abb...@gmail.com> wrote: > Strange set of comments. Why so much defensiveness? I asked why the > discovery was important. It was only a question. It wasn't an implied > assertion that it wasn't important. All I wanted was an intuitive > explanation for why it was important. And in fact the paragraph that I > quoted in my second post was the sort of answer I was looking for. > It may seem "blatantly obvious to [Glen] that the substitution of As for P > in DNA is important," It wasn't to me, which is why I asked. Also the > article Glen pointed to didn't say that As was substituted for P in DNA in > particular. Nor was the paragraph Glen quotes in that article--not that I > would have understood it anyway. I would still have asked what that means > to a layman and why it matters. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
