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August 23rd, 2011

celamity: (river)
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011 07:52 am
So, structures have been found in some 4,3 billion year old rocks in Australia which may or may not have been sulphur-eating microbes. This would make them the earliest known cellular lifeforms, and their metabolism is of a kind that could arise independently of oxygen, such as in a Mars-like environment.

How this is reported in a Norwegian newspaper? With a headline saying the world's oldest fossil shows there might have been life on Mars after all, and the claim that this sulphur-eating microbe is proof that life could arise without the oxygen that is supplied by plants, which apparently isn't something that has been a well established fact for years. (Oh, and just having a sulphur-eating microbe at all is also new and astounding knowledge, it seems.)

As far as I am concerned, this is further proof that you could send certain 'science' journalists to Mars and still not find intelligent life there.