Og det må vel være 2014 nr han mener ? “All the textbooks say it shouldn’t be possible,” he says, “but by golly, those things just keep growing on the electrode, and there’s no other source of energy there.” Growing on the electrode. It sounds incredible. Nealson pivots on his chair to face me and gives a mischievous grin. “It is kind of like science fiction,” he says. To a biologist, finding life that chugs along without a molecular energy source such as carbohydrates is about as unlikely as seeing passengers flying through the air without an airplane. That discovery comes with some sizable implications. On a practical level, electric bacteria could be harnessed to create biological fuel cells or to clean up human waste. Nealson tells me that one of his former students just got a grant to build a bacteria-powered sewage system. But more to the point, such microbes appear to comprise a vast, largely unexplored realm of life on this planet. There’s a chance they are an important part of the biodiversity on planets beyond ours too. Nealson never utters the word “aliens,” but it hangs heavily over the conversation. His bacteria are unlike anything we’ve ever encountered, and they are forcing us to rethink life as we know it. popsci/have-we-found-alien-life?dom=fb&SOC
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 08:24:38 +0000
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