The argument in favor of extraterrestrial life somewhere out beyond the cosmos gained a little momentum today. NASA scientists announced that bacteria they’d found deep down in the mud at Mono Lake in California was able to live on arsenic – basically, poison – rather than phosphorous. Why all the noise? Phosphorous, and not arsenic, has long been considered one of the six building blocks of life along with carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and sulfur. Until now, nothing known to science has been able to consume arsenic and survive, with or without phosphorous.

No, scientists did not discover space aliens in that mud. But they did find a radically new life form that shares no known biology with any living thing on the planet earth. Naturally, this opens the door for increased speculation that such organisms could live abroad, and not just here, but elsewhere in the universe. The experiment was led by Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA astrobiology fellow at the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California.

NASA administrators said today that this finding "will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life." Think Mars, and the Viking space ships that failed to turn up anything even resembling life way back in 1976. But those probes weren’t looking for life forms that had learned to live outside the box formed by the six known building blocks. Mono Lake’s little arsenic-eaters will change all of that.

But there are San Diego proponents of extraterrestrial life who think that NASA may be way behind the curve on the subject of alien life forms.

“I have been contacted by advanced people from other planets, I’ve been taken out of my body, and I have been taken aboard starships myself," says Daniel Smith. "I’ve interacted with [aliens.] Basically, they’re just like you and me, the ones I met.”

Smith, 64, lives near Mesa College and works as a certified personal physical fitness trainer. He is also a published author. His book Roots of the Earth Man was published in 1981. “It’s a true story about a former lifetime I lived 156,000 years ago on this planet when everyone was aboriginal and a starship or space ship crash landed and I happened to be the one who witnessed it and went to investigate,” he says.

Smith was not surprised to learn of the research team’s findings and he says that their intentions are good. “However, there are certain people in NASA who do know the truth, just like in our government," he says. "There are people who know the truth about extra-terrestrials and have actually had contact with them and they don’t want the rest of us to know.” Smith respects that there may be some resistance to his ideas, but says it’s preferable to keep an open mind.

Best of all, he says not to worry: “At this time, from what I’ve researched, there are no hostile extra-terrestrials on our planet.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues will publish their findings this Friday in Science.