Newest Element!

NASA will announce later Thursday an explosive finding in the search for new life forms on Earth and beyond, a discovery that shifts what scientists consider necessary for life to exist. While details of the study are under embargo until 2:00 pm (1900 GMT), media leaks have already established that the findings relate to a bacteria that survives and grows on arsenic, uncovered deep in a California lake. Until now, biologists have said life requires six elements, known by the acronym CHNOPS: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Those elements must take shape within three components of an organism: DNA, protein and fats.Every life form has DNA. It is the identifier that, for example, allows humans to reproduce other humans while mice give birth to mice.In other words, DNA is a molecule (called deoxyribonucleic acid) that gives life its biological instructions. All known life needs phosphorus, which serves as the backbone for these nucleic acids that make up life's genetic material.