The AsBacteria

First was all the hype NASA created about something extraordinary, press releases etc (in science a very typical thing of a lot of smoke but little fire);

Then people wondered if it would be about a new life form or basically the admittance of life forms outside earth (aliens, area 51 etc);

Finally the paper came out and we could know more about the subject. (I have to admit here that I have not read the paper)

I leave you with an paragraph of a science blog that summarizes what I imagined it would be since the beginning:

"Then the stories calmed down, and instead it was that they had discovered an earthly life form that used a radically different chemistry. I was dubious, even at that. And then I finally got the paper from Science, and I'm sorry to let you all down, but it's none of the above. It's an extremophile bacterium that can be coaxed into substiting arsenic for phosphorus in some of its basic biochemistry. It's perfectly reasonable and interesting work in its own right, but it's not radical, it's not particularly surprising, and it's especially not extraterrestrial. It's the kind of thing that will get a sentence or three in biochemistry textbooks in the future."

in http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/its_not_an_arsenic-based_life.php

R