NASA announced on Thursday in a press conference that it discovered in a lake in California a bacteria that does not share the same DNA with the rest of species on Earth. If life on Earth is based on six essential elements, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur the new bacteria replaces phosphorus with chemical arsenic, a poisonous substance for most organisms on Earth.

Phosphorus is one of the elemets that compose the DNA and RNA and is an essential element for all cells. The discovery modifies completely the way people seek life in cosmic space.

The new discovery confirms that the bio-chemical structure of life can be radically different than what it evolved on Earth.