Many years ago, when I used to hear scientists talk about the search for life in other planets, and they used to say things like "There's no oxygen there so there can't be life there", I used to think to myself, "What if life evolved there without needing oxygen to survive?"
I have always felt that even people as brilliant as scientists can often have a narrow view of what life can be. They usually judge the possibility of life on other planets based on what they know about life on our planet.
But if you think about it, how likely was it that a single-celled organism evolved over millions of years and diversified into the millions of species that we have today? It would seem highly unlikely right? And yet, that's our reality!
Similarly, why can't it happen that life elsewhere evolved in a different way. Why can't it be that life can take a completely different form and be something that we wouldn't even call "life" according to our standards? Well, scientists have found something that might challenge our understanding of life.
The First Animal That Doesn't Need Oxygen
A team of researchers at Tel Aviv University have recently discovered a jellyfish-like parasite that doesn't need oxygen to survive. And it is the first animal that has been discovered that has this special feat.
When the researchers studied the genome of the parasite, they found that it lacked a mitochondrial genome. This means that the parasite doesn't breathe and is completely free of oxygen dependency.
The jellyfish-like parasite is called Henneguya salminicola and it is still not clear to the scientists exactly how it can survive without oxygen. They will need further studies to understand the processes that allow it to survive.
This finding may make scientists take a different approach to the search for life in the cosmos. The places that we had ruled out maybe ruled back in! Who knows what kind of life forms may exist out there. The search still continues.
For an in-depth read on this, check this article out.
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