Quote:What they found was adenine and guanine. These are two of the nucleobases needed to make the rungs of DNA's spiral ladder (in addition to thymine and cytosine, which were not present in the sample).They didn't find strands of DNA, they found some of the parts that make DNA. If they had found DNA that story would probably have gotten wayyy more attention, because presumably they could use it to create dinosaurs and launch Jurassic Park. Or C'thulhu, in which case we would be pretty well fucked.
The team also found hypoxathine and xanthine, which are not part of DNA but are used in various biological processes.
But seriously, it's a fascinating find. It means that the building blocks of life might be scattered about the galaxy and maybe even the universe, which means that there might be planets out there which are just a few billion years away from spawning their own sentient species.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
