Magnetic life forms

It's a shame you didn't post the link to the article. I am not sure quite what is meant by "magnetic life forms" in this context but it sounds like a "fringe science" topic to me. Of course, there is nothing wrong with speculating on the possibility of life forms different from our own. This is one of the ways in which new discoveries are occasionally made and is certainly a very fruitful source of some excellent fiction. Ever since the discovery of magnetism, magnetic fields have been thought to be beneficial in medicine, though modern medical science would largely discount these applications. There is some evidence that many species use or are aware of magnetic fields - for example, it has been postulated that homing pigeons and other animals may use the Earth's magnetic field as part of their geolocation mechanisms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoception Water may certainly be affected by magnetic fields: http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/magnetic.html and, since water is essential to many life forms, it would seem possible that whatever effects magnetism had on the behaviour and structure of water would be exploited in some way by some form of life. It seems that not a great deal is known or understood about such mechanisms.

I have only ever encountered this idea in science fiction stories, but that would not disbar the possibility. Science is increased by observation and experiment, but since we are restricted to this planet then the only life that we are aware of is the life on Earth. It has long been accepted that life is carbon based and has to conform to certain guidelines, although the fact that all life on Earth qualifies by those standards does not convince me that life in other forms cannot exist. It will be a long time before mankind has developed the technology to actually travel to other parts of space and until then we are only guessing.