IOS 7

NASA Discovers Arsenic-Fed Life Form

NASA has discovered a new life form that can grow by substituting arsenic for phosphorus, redefining the agency's search for different life forms other than the ones known on earth.

The discovery was made by astrobiologists who performed tests by taking mud from Mono Lake -- a body of water in Northern California three times as salty as the ocean -- which has high arsenic content, said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA astrobiology research fellow with the U.S. Geological Survey, during a press conference Thursday.

Researchers created an environment that had everything else a typical life form that exists on earth would need to survive, except for phosphorus - which is one of the building blocks of all existing life forms. Instead, they used arsenic -- normally a toxic element to existing life forms -- to replace phosphorus, she said.

To their surprise, a microbe not only was able to tolerate the toxicity, "but it grew and thrived," Wolfe-Simon said. "Nothing should have grown."

The experiment has widespread ramifications for how NASA will search for other signs of life, she said.

Chrome 7, iOS make big leaps in web share in November

Chrome 7 and iOS were the biggest winners for web market share in November, NetApplications said. Google's browser was reported as having the second fastest share gain of any individual browser version, jumping 5.64 percent to hit 8.02 percent of all browsers. All of Chrome reached 9.26 percent and widened a lead over Safari, which also gained but at 5.55 percent was still well behind.

Internet Explorer continued its ongoing slide to 58.44 percent, and Firefox also dropped to its lowest point in the past year at about 22.76 percent. Chrome may get another boost this month following the launch of Chrome 8.

Among operating systems, iOS had the largest gains in the month. Although it only gained a tenth of a point to 1.36 percent, it was still larger than a smaller gain for Linux, which reached 0.93 percent. Windows kept dropping and fell to 90.81 percent, while the Mac mostly recovered lost ground from October at 5.03 percent.

NetApplications didn't directly explain the changes, but Google has usually enjoyed a boost to share with every major release and has been attracting Firefox users who prefer the speed. iOS share isn't as clear since Apple is neither close to a recent device release and was only just entering holiday sales that often see an uptick in iOS hardware in users' hands.