NASA's New Plans To Hunt for Extraterrestrial Life

NASA's New Plans To Hunt for Extraterrestrial Life Posted: 22 Sep 2014 04:00 AM PDT NASA outlines hunt for extraterrestrial life The space agency has used new simulations to determine how best to identify a life-bearing world. Researchers at NASA's Virtual Planetary Laboratory have been successful in accurately simulating the atmospheric chemistry of extrasolar planets in an effort to better understand the chemical compositions that would indicate the presence of life. Now thanks to these findings they have been able to reveal the best way to determine whether or not the presence of a gas such as methane means that a planet could have life on it. "When we ran these calculations, we found that in some cases, there was a significant amount of ozone that built up in the atmosphere, despite there not being any oxygen flowing into the atmosphere," said NASA's Shawn Domagal-Goldman. "This has important implications for our future plans to look for life beyond Earth." The researchers concluded that it isn't enough to rely on the detection of just one key gas in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet as there are too many non-biological processes that could give rise to them. Instead, they argue, to identify a planet as a potential habitat for life there need to be indications of at least two of these gases present in its atmosphere. "Our research strengthens the argument that methane and oxygen together, or methane and ozone together, are still strong signatures of life," said Domagal-Goldman.