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If living is subject of spread from major planet to planet — a concept known as " panspermia " — then we might be able to detect it , even if we do n’t get it on what we ’re looking for , new research suggests .
Astronomers are on the hunt forlife beyond Earth . While there are several promising locations within thesolar system , the sheer abundance of exoplanets means that we are most likely to find life on a planet orbiting another star . There aremore than 5,000 corroborate exoplanetsto date , according to NASA — and that number is always rising .
An illustration of an impact crater on Mars. A fringe theory called “panspermia” suggests that meteors, like the one that made this crater, may also deliver alien life between planets.
But these searches for extraterrestrial life currently face one major roadblock : we do n’t know incisively what we ’re seem for . We only bed of one kind of satellite that is definitely capable of hosting life , and we only know of one kind of lifespan — that is , Earth , and the carbon copy - based life that is found here . But life may , say astronomers , take anastonishing telephone number of formsthroughout the galaxy . While we might get extremely lucky and find an exact replication of Earth with the exact same kind of liveliness , we are more probable to face fuzzy , unclear , nuanced situations that will take many years to unravel .
A duet of astronomer latterly proposed an alternative to this approach , focusing less on what life would look like and more on what life would do . Specifically , they propose a detection strategy based on the concept of panspermia , the idea that life can start on one major planet and distribute to others by hitching rides on meteorites .
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While panspermia lies outside the mainstream of scientific enquiry , it ’s not outright fake - skill either . Martian meteorite havebeen find oneself on Earth , and scientist are routinely surprised by the boldness of live on creatures and the extreme environments that they can last in .
One of the primal characteristics of any kind of life is its ability to deepen a satellite ’s innate balance . On Earth , for example , we have far more O in our atmosphere than we would were life sentence not present , and distant observers would notice much more greenish on our landmasses than there would be otherwise .
We do n’t bang exactly what properties of an exoplanet that alien life story would exchange — but , if that life is subject of panspermia , then it would essay to make those same changes on every planet it descend across as it spread from public to world . Sometimes it would neglect , if the conditions were n’t right to allow that life to flourish — but sometimes it would succeed , making the new planet interchangeable to its original world . Then that unexampled major planet would dish out as a starting peak for a young rung of panspermia .
In their unexampled work , the research worker devised a statistical test where , if we measure enough properties of enough planets , then we can potentially distinguish a clustering of nearby satellite that divvy up similar characteristics . Since these planets , each one orbiting a aloof superstar , would have no other reason to be similar to each other , this clump would stand out from the collection of allexoplanets .
Such a discovery would n’t be a smoke gun for name spirit , but it would be a major clue that something strange was fall out to those planet — and that the cause just might be life propagating among the stars .
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The researcher acknowledged that their work has limitations . Firstly , it take over that panspermia is possible , which is an untried hypothesis . second , their technique only make for if we can take in enough data about a large numeral of exoplanets . But the vantage of their technique is that it ’s " agnostical , " have in mind that it can identify a potential signature of life without any bigger assumptions about how that life works .
Theteam ’s researchwas bring out in March to the preprint database arXiv , and has not yet been peer reviewed .
