FastForward Radio — Living Past 200, Alien Life, and Tricky Predictions

By | December 8, 2010
1 Comment
Phil  and Stephen welcome Michael Anissimov back to FastForward Radio to continue last week’s discussion about increases in human life expectancy.

Also on the agenda:

Last week’s big news from NASA about the discovery of “alien” life

The recent IEEE report on Ray Kurzweil’s missed predictions
 
About our guest:

Michael Anissimov is a science / technology writer and consultant. He is the creative force behind one of the leading futurist blogs, Accelerating Future. He is a co-founder of the Immortality Institute and the Media Director for the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.



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  • mattduing

    The research suggesting the presence of bacteria thriving on arsenic seems to have been very sloppy and its conclusion likely false. The replacement of phosphorus with arsenic in nucleotides would make them unstable in an aqueous environment. No mass spectrometry studies where done to confirm the incorporation of phosphorus into the bacteria’s biomolecules. A sample of bacteria taken from the lake grew in an arsenic-rich media but the media also contained a small amount of phosphorus and the metabolisms of bacteria are often highly efficient. The bacteria that grew appeared to be starved for nutrients on electron micrographs. Also, the lake the sample was taken from has high arsenic content but phosphorus is even more abundant.
    Source: http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-critics-nasa-arsenic-bacteria.html