The rock, Clinton said, “speaks to us across … billions of years and millions of miles. It speaks of the possibility of life. If this discovery is confirmed, it will surely be one of the most stunning insights into our universe that science has ever uncovered.”
That’s the question raised by an intriguing new paper in the journal Nature Astronomy, which argues that our life-detection methods are sometimes flawed, our biases are sometimes roadblocks, and we too often fail to turn over a rock—both literally and metaphorically—to see if something’s living underneath it. That could mean that data gathered suggesting life during multi-billion missions sent specifically to hunt for it—in the deserts of Mars, in the oceans of Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s Europa, on the surface of distant exoplanets—could be overlooked or dismissed before getting a fair and robust scientific vetting. We’re visiting other worlds to look for extant life but setting ourselves up for failure when we get there.
Read more: Is Colonizing Space the Next Stage of Human Evolution?
“Because false negatives in biology do not present…acute risks,” the authors write, “they receive much less attention. Nevertheless, they are still missed opportunities to detect life.”
“There has never been a mission that looked further into that,” said Ten Kate in a conversation with TIME. “I would love to see a mission going into that direction again.”
“We really [have to] look at an environment from all different viewpoints,” says Ten Kate. “We should be conducting our studies differently from the way we’re conducting them now, so as to increase the odds that we don’t overlook biosignatures.”
“This finding by Perseverance … is the closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars,” said then-acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. “The identification of a potential biosignature on the Red Planet is a groundbreaking discovery.”
“We need further research, and of course we would need sample return,” says Ten Kate. “I don’t think those are missed opportunities yet, because everyone is interested. Understanding those types of environments will hopefully prevent that from being a false negative.”
“If there were bacteria, the bacteria might have drowned because the growth medium contained too much water,” says Ten Kate. “On Earth we also have microbes that inhale their water directly from the atmosphere, so if you submerge them in growth medium, they die too.”
“Space missions and instruments are designed to detect potential signs of life,” said Ten Kate in the official statement, “but the risk of overlooking something is not taken into account. The search for signs of life should go hand in hand with better-defined questions and testable hypotheses.”
Hence then, the article about how the world searches for extraterrestrial life may be holding back discoveries was published today ( ) and is available on Time ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( How The World Searches for Extraterrestrial Life May Be Holding Back Discoveries )
Also on site :