Some scientists are taking issue with findings by NASA scientists that they have engineered life which survives with different chemicals than the life we know.
Several microbiologists point out that the experiments outlined in the published paper have a lot of holes and don't prove what the NASA scientists say they prove. Weird, arsenic-based microbes could exist, they say, but the experiments in the published paper don't prove that the life forms they're examining are such microbes.
It'll be left to other scientists to try to duplicate the results of the NASA researchers in their own experiments, and those results will probably provide as final an answer as may arrive on the matter.
In the meantime, 38 years ago yesterday, humanity's most recent journey beyond low Earth orbit began; showing that NASA can indeed stretch boundaries. Even if they're only lexicographical and involve redefining the word "recent."
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