"Scientists Just Discovered a Creature That Breaks the Rules of Life". I mean, that's quite the headline. 

Sukunaarchaeum mirabile is also quite the name to pronounce. But yes, that's the name of a recently discovered organism that apparently challenges the traditional scientific definition of 'life'. 

There's a fair bit of scientific jargon to sieve through, but the quick summary is this: Cells are considered "alive" because of their ability to self-replicate and reproduce, whereas viruses don't grow, reproduce independently or generate their own energy. Viruses reliance on hijacking host cells for key functions means that they are typically excluded from the tree of life. 

This sukunaarchaeum mirabile exists somewhere in between. It replies on a host for many biological tasks (like a virus), but also contains the necessary genes to create its own ribosomes and messenger RNA (like a cell). So it is at once 'life' and 'not life'. 

There's also a whole thing about the sukunaarchaeum's extreme genome reduction (238,000 base pairs compared to the 490,000 of the smallest known complete genome within the archea group) that I don't fully understand.  

Point is, there's plenty of strange life on Earth. Maybe we don't need to be firing so many rockets into the sky searching for life on other planets, when we haven't even properly figured out life here on our own.