Scientists believe that in the coming decades we will be able to detect signs of life on extrasolar planets, but for this new tools and techniques will be needed. Researchers from all over the world have just defined a kind of roadmap to develop techniques that will finally answer the question: will we be alone in the Universe? The work was published this month in five articles in the journal Astrobiology. The documents will serve as a reference for future research that intends to look at how scientists can search for signs of life in the Universe using telescope observations.
Detectable bio-signatures.
The past, present and future of remotely detectable bio-signatures research. Credit: Astrobiology, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., New Rochelle, NY.
It is estimated that there may be planets around almost every star in the Galaxy. In fact, exoplanets (planets that orbit stars beyond the Sun) have been discovered at such a high rate - more than 3,500 since the first discovery in 1992 - that an urgent meeting of scientists from various fields was needed to synthesize the knowledge that will take the ability to find signs of life on these planets further. Formed three years ago, NASA's NExSS (Nexus for Exoplanet System Science) is an international network that encompasses researchers from various fields in order to discover how we can characterize and eventually look for signs of life, or bio signatures, on exoplanets. As we cannot yet visit exoplanets, scientists need to use telescopes to search for bio signatures, and the technology of these telescopes will have to be perfected for these observations.
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