Detecting chemical biosignatures on exoplanets is a painstaking process fraught with potential false positives. Is there a better way?
This artist's illustration shows the exoplanet WASP-62B. Searching for chemical biosignatures on exoplanets is a painstaking process, weighed down by assumptions and prone to false positives. Is there a better way to find exoplanets with a chance to support life? Image Credit: CfA
The fundamental goal that the pair of authors give voice to is a difficult one to reach. “This proves to be an exceptional challenge outside of our solar system, where strong assumptions must be made about how life would manifest and interact with its planet,” the authors explain. We only know how Earth’s biosphere works, and we’re left to assume what similarities there might be with other planets. We don’t have any consensus about how biospheres might be able to work.
The word ‘agnostic’ is key here. It means that they’re aiming to detect a biosignature that’s independent of the assumptions we’re normally saddled with. “This biosignature is agnostic because it is independent of strong assumptions about any particular instantiation of life or planetary characteristic—by focusing on a specific hypothesis of what life may do rather than what life may be,” the authors explain.
Panspermia is the idea that life is spread throughout the galaxy, or even the Universe, by asteroids, comets, and even minor planets. Credit: NASA/Jenny Mottor The authors’ model shows that the way planets are distributed around stars, along with their other characteristics, could be evidence of life without even attempting to detect chemical biosignatures. This is the agnostic part of their work. It’s more powerful than a one-planet-at-a-time struggle to detect biosignatures, as plagued as that effort is by assumptions. Single planets with detected biosignatures can always be explained away by something anomalous.
Terraformed planets can be identified from their clustering, the authors claim. That’s because when they’re terraformed, the planets need to reflect the originating planet.
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