Maybe arsenic-based life too? This special announcement for merely "signs of" (instead of corfirmation) speaks of PR and the need to secure next years budget...
Currently the mainstream opinion is that the bacteria didn't use arsenate, but were very good at using the small amounts of phosphate that was still present in the experiment. And that the experimenters were not very good at cleaning all the phosphate out of the growth medium.
So the highly publicized 2010 study is now pretty much falsified.
This is exactly what I was thinking... There was such a hullaballo about arsenic-based life just some years ago and then it happened not to be that after all.
Mmmmhh... Since when does NASA need a press conference?
