A New Recipe for Hunting Alien Life
scientificamerican.com
A New Recipe for Hunting Alien Life
1–10 of 40 posts
Re: A New Recipe for Hunting Alien Life
#2I'm all for it. When does hunting season open?
Re: A New Recipe for Hunting Alien Life
#3TL;DR:
With existing technology it’s tough to detect oxygen on smaller far-away planets. However, what we could instead look for is a combination of gases that likely means presence of life on earlier stages, before oxygen becomes abundant in the atmosphere. (The assumption is that the alien life we might find would likely be on early stages of development anyway.)
This research is about how such a combination of gases—lots of carbon dioxide, methane, and no carbon monoxide—can be detected and told apart from possible nonliving sources. The new approach should be viable to apply using Webb telescope on smaller planets like the ones in TRAPPIST-1 system.
Re: A New Recipe for Hunting Alien Life
#4If it bleeds, we can kill it.
Re: A New Recipe for Hunting Alien Life
#5The fermi paradox bothered me quite a bit, like all paradoxes and they should bother everybody. They are a flag that something does not add up and there must be some sort of wrong assumption somewhere.
As most of our combined "knowledge" does not add up correctly just one example is quantum mechanics and relativity - no, they do not add and therefor need higher dimensions to have a model (a emergency hatch).
It is quite funny when you understand that 2 general believed assumptions are the root cause for all the strangeness in our psysical models and very far down the line it explains why we will never receive alien EM signals in the area we a searching in - really makes no sense to scan there.
Non the less, I appreciate their efforts.
Re: A New Recipe for Hunting Alien Life
#6This reminds me of one of my favourite pieces of science writing ever: "Bands of Iron", by Adam Lee[0]. I don't think I've ever read something that better conveyed a sense of Deep Time[1] in the context of life on this planet:
> Unlike today, there were no oxygen-breathing animals to expire carbon dioxide and close the cycle, and so it quickly built up in the atmosphere as photosynthetic bacteria spread and thrived. To us, it’s the breath of life, but to these bacteria, it was a deadly toxin.
Luckily for these bacteria, there was iron that could react with this oxygen, keeping the atmosphere liveable for a while. That is, until the iron ran out and oxygen build up in deadly concentrations:
> The consequence was mass death among the planet’s abundant bacterial colonies – an oxygen holocaust that knocked life back down to nearly nothing. Only a few anaerobes survived, in isolated nooks and crannies where the deadly gas did not reach.
> After this catastrophe, the planet would have seen several million years of relative quiet. In this life-poor era, layers of silica minerals were deposited on the ocean floor. But in the meanwhile, erosion continued to free up iron atoms, which slowly scrubbed the atmosphere and oceans of oxygen.
> Eventually, the world was cleansed, and life bounced back, spreading from its refuges to once again cover the planet. Of course, this exuberance contained the seeds of its own downfall – bacteria still spewed out the waste oxygen that they could not abide – and the cycle repeated, not just once but many times. Each time, a layer of iron oxides was deposited, followed by a layer of iron-poor silicates in the aftermath.
It took almost a billion years before aerobic bacteria evolved and broke the cycle. Think about that: for about a third of the entire time life has existed on this planet, it was stuck in this self-destructive loop.
EDIT: What this story also shows is how much of Earth's geology is a result of the presence of life, and I recall reading articles of scientist trying to figure out if that could be used to detect the presence of life. Although I guess that measuring the chemical composition of the rocks on another planet would be even harder to measure than the atmosphere.
[0] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2009/02/bands-o...
Re: A New Recipe for Hunting Alien Life
#7The fermi paradox bothered me quite a bit, like all paradoxes and they should bother everybody. They are a flag that something does not add up and there must be some sort of wrong assumption somewhere. As most of our combined "knowledge" does not add up correctly just one example is quantum mechanics and relativity - no, they do not add and therefor need higher dimensions to have a model (a emergency hatch). It is qu…
> It is quite funny when you understand that 2 general believed assumptions are the root cause for all the strangeness in our psysical models
Eh.. no? That's literally the opposite of how it works: it's not two strange assumptions causing all this weirdness, it's two very strange observed phenomena for which these two models give the best predictions, so far.
Re: A New Recipe for Hunting Alien Life
#8TL;DR: With existing technology it’s tough to detect oxygen on smaller far-away planets. However, what we could instead look for is a combination of gases that likely means presence of life on earlier stages, before oxygen becomes abundant in the atmosphere. (The assumption is that the alien life we might find would likely be on early stages of development anyway.) This research is about how such a combination of gas…
I'm not a scientist by any means, but since childhood when I was first exposed to the fact that life on Earth needs oxygen (and many other things, in extremely basic terms) to exist, I've been thinking to myself what if there are other distant planets where life has bootstrapped itself from completely different (or maybe opposite) components and conditions. I'm sure someone with more knowledge than I in biology and physics would certainly be able to offer a good explanation or thought.
Re: A New Recipe for Hunting Alien Life
#9The fermi paradox bothered me quite a bit, like all paradoxes and they should bother everybody. They are a flag that something does not add up and there must be some sort of wrong assumption somewhere. As most of our combined "knowledge" does not add up correctly just one example is quantum mechanics and relativity - no, they do not add and therefor need higher dimensions to have a model (a emergency hatch). It is qu…
It's not really a paradox, right? It's just a big equation and we're guessing at the variables.
Re: A New Recipe for Hunting Alien Life
#10TL;DR: With existing technology it’s tough to detect oxygen on smaller far-away planets. However, what we could instead look for is a combination of gases that likely means presence of life on earlier stages, before oxygen becomes abundant in the atmosphere. (The assumption is that the alien life we might find would likely be on early stages of development anyway.) This research is about how such a combination of gas…
I'm not a scientist by any means, but since childhood when I was first exposed to the fact that life on Earth needs oxygen (and many other things, in extremely basic terms) to exist, I've been thinking to myself what if there are other distant planets where life has bootstrapped itself from completely different (or maybe opposite) components and conditions. I'm sure someone with more knowledge than I in biology and p…
I think the problem there is simply the fact that it isn't knowable. If there is a way for life to be that different, how do you look for it?
My first statement is likely stronger than it needs to be. My main question back to you is, how do you look for something that you imagine may exist, but couldn't say how?