First Bigfoot at Mono Lake, Now Extreme "Alien" Life There

I try to keep up with some of the latest scientific finds that show up. Not everything, but I am always curious about astronomy, physics, some of the life sciences, etc. In fact, I hope to have some things I have been working on regarding the history of astronomy show up on here in the next few months. I know the process of how scientists do their work and then publish in peer reviewed journals. It is usually a slow, meticulous process with very little drama. This is why I am always amused when the popular media totally blows science out of proportion.

Earlier this week I was very interested in hearing about what the find by NASA would be regarding Astrobiology. What could it be? Could they have found life in the solar system apart from earth?

Well, not quite. I just had to laugh when I heard that this organism they found was from Mono Lake. One of my dad's old pictures of the Mono Lake tufa from way back:

Even more funny was that I had a presentation to give about an hour after the Nasa press conference where a small part of it would be about Mono Lake. The people I was presenting to had not heard anything about the new find so I was able to say a little of what I knew about this. Then, when it was over I was kicking myself for not having my new Clint Eastwood "Return to Lago" blogs/videos up yet...give me another month or two.

Here is what I got out of this. Life as we know it is carbon based that has six essential ingredients: oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, carbon, and phosphorus. Mono Lake, which has three times the amount of salt than the ocean, is rich in phosphorus and arsenic. They found microbes that live in this environment at Mono Lake. They took them to a lab and found that by taking away some of the phosphorus the microbes were able to grow with arsenic instead. Therefore, life is more complicated than we thought because it appears that the conditions life can exist in is bigger than originally thought.

The research is impressive. Maybe not as dramatic as the popular media and some of what I have seen written online, but still very cool and I eagerly away to see where this leads. Can these microbes live completely without phosophorus? What mechanism(s) in their machinery allow them to do this? I noticed that NYU chemist, Robert Shapiro, had these to say in one of the articles I will list below:

"This is an interesting curiosity, a novel discovery but not a paradigm-breaking one," said New York University chemist Robert Shapiro, an authority on DNA and the origin of life who was not involved in the project. "It is a cousin of known living things that has some peculiar habits."

Shapiro is one of the respected skeptics to this type of research that I have read in the past. In any case, I will let the scientists clash with each other on this one.

Of course, I probably would not be bringing any of this up had it not been for Mono Lake. If you have read this blog for any amount of time then you know this lake comes up once in while. It is really wild place. I cannot say I enjoy being there during the heat of the day during the summer. However, I do not think I ever showed the time the wind was REALLY BAD one day I was nearby. As I remember, this was a few years back. In fact, it was a day that I intended to do the Eastwood videos, but had to come back on another day. The wind was causing all sorts of waves and water in the air.As I remember, there was a man who died on this day because he was caught with his kayak at there. Yeah, once the winds come up, you get out of there.

Back to the new find for moment as I wrap this up. I am curious how the Mono Lake group is going to try to use this to their advantage. As one who has property nearby I get the advertisements and "send us money" routine. Not that is a bad thing because everyone does that, especially during these economic times. However, sometimes I see them as totally unrealistic about things: their disappointment with proposition 21. Believe me, they and the rest of the Sierra gets enough money out of me, my relatives, and friends.

The BBC article on the Arsenic Loving Bacteria

The Wall Street Journal article on New Link in Chain of Life

Oh, btw, if you did not understand why I used the title above for this blog entry check out my April 1st blog here:

Yer a Bunch of IdiOts!

Also, you can compare the new Nasa photo of the day with my picture of Mt. Dana. For a moment I thought it was my picture. Of course, everyone that hikes Mt. Dana gets this shot:

NASA picture of Mono Lake from Dana

My Mt. Dana Hike (the second picture is the one you want)

Yer A Bunch A Idi0ts!

How is that for a title? Insult my audience. If there is one thing I have learned from something like Youtube is the way to get more people to watch your stuff is to anger them. It is the whole, "there is no negative publicity," thing. The unfortunate part is you get a bunch of people that do not watch your stuff because they like you, but quite the opposite. A mob mentality forms. I am totally not like that, and the last thing I need after a hard day at work is dealing with an angry mob during my "hobby" time.

In light of what today is...check the date...you get the idea...I thought I would offer up a screwball video and a little commentary on a screwball documentary.

You can figure this one out:

Left Turn to Nowhere (Youtube Version)

Okay, a little while back I referred to a tv documentary that I felt almost made a mockery of what I do. It had nothing to do with me, but the coincidences were kind annoying. There was a series on the History Channel called Monster Quest. It deals with legendary animals/creatures and the paranormal from what I can tell. Well, I was told I needed to watch the episodes called, Sierra Sasquatch. At the risk of taking something too seriously that the producers were probably laughing at behind the scenes, here we go...

First, before I turned this on, I was thinking, "why is this on the History Channel?" Maybe Sci-Fi, Discovery, etc., but the History Channel? Of course, I realize there is the issue of putting stuff on to get ratings, but even this was so over the top I thought I better comment here.

This episode might have worked with me had it been somewhere in Canada I have never been, but the fact it was practically my backyard during just about every summer of my life was just too much. The premise of the episode is there have been Bigfoot sightings near the Mono Lake vicinity.

In my experiences, there are lots of animals that have watched me during my hikes, but I really seriously doubt a bunch of Bigfoot are out there. This particular area is remote, but not THAT REMOTE from people crossing by. I think I would have been more impressed with a documentary on wolverine's in the Sierra because they are out there, but are very rare to see.

They had a guy who was training at the marine base in 1985 that supposedly saw some while doing a training mission, they had a glider plane fly over Mono Lake and the June Lake area with radar, a hunter who allegedly encounter some a few years back, and one of the lead investigators supposedly saw one cross the road out near the June Lake area. Then the had 11-13 foot tracks at what looked like Grant Lake. Yeah, my shoe size range. The main thing they showed was video footage taken in the early 1990's at the western tufa site of Mono Lake.

We are told the video footage was done by a father with his family and was not seen until 17 years after while going through the video. Of course, the father was shown as a shadow since he feared for his families privacy. Yeah...right. ;) This is what showed up:

You can clearly see something moving by.
Is it a man with a parka or bigfoot? They went to the site above these days, and it is under water where the "creature" would have been standing. Take whatever you want from this, but these days video footage is very easy to manipulate. Inserting something like the above would not seem to difficult.

Here is what was sort of funny about this episode. They did it during the time I was there for a weekend in October. I hiked in both Lundy Canyon and near June Lake and both were the main featured areas in this documentary. I will blog about these in the future, but the funny thing is I seemed to remember driving by a bunch of people when I left Lundy Canyon that could have been a film crew. I might have walked right by some of these guys out there and not even known it. Check this out, this guy was out there looking for tracks:

I saw that plume of smoke in the background. I knew I was there the few hours that thing was up. This is right after we got done hiking in Lundy Canyon. It was a bizarre thing to see so I said we had to stop and take pictures.
A close up. That was there only on this day.
So, it was downright creepy they filmed in exactly the two main areas I hiked that weekend. I told my brother we need to stop hiking these areas because some idiots think were Bigfoot/Sasquatch. ;)

There is a sucker born every minute. Don't believe everything you see on tv. Alright, enough for the screwy fools day. More serious stuff next time.