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New Study Dramatically Narrows the Search for Advanced Life in the Universe:
In a new study, a UC Riverside–led team discovered that a buildup of toxic gases in the atmospheres of most planets makes them unfit for complex life as we know it.
Traditionally, much of the search for extraterrestrial life has focused on what scientists call the "habitable zone," defined as the range of distances from a star warm enough that liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. That description works for basic, single-celled microbes—but not for complex creatures like animals, which include everything from simple sponges to humans.
The team's work, published today in The Astrophysical Journal, shows that accounting for predicted levels of certain toxic gases narrows the safe zone for complex life by at least half—and in some instances eliminates it altogether.
"This is the first time the physiological limits of life on Earth have been considered to predict the distribution of complex life elsewhere in the universe," said Timothy Lyons, one of the study's co-authors, a distinguished professor of biogeochemistry in UCR's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and director of the Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center, which sponsored the project.
"Imagine a 'habitable zone for complex life' defined as a safe zone where it would be plausible to support rich ecosystems like we find on Earth today," Lyons explained. "Our results indicate that complex ecosystems like ours cannot exist in most regions of the habitable zone as traditionally defined."
[...] "To sustain liquid water at the outer edge of the conventional habitable zone, a planet would need tens of thousands of times more carbon dioxide than Earth has today," said Edward Schwieterman, the study's lead author and a NASA Postdoctoral Program fellow working with Lyons. "That's far beyond the levels known to be toxic to human and animal life on Earth."
Similar difficulties occur with respect to ultraviolet light which leads to excess carbon monoxide; even small amounts preferentially bind to hemoglobin leading to "death of body cells due to lack of oxygen."
More information: Edward W. Schwieterman et al. A Limited Habitable Zone for Complex Life, The Astrophysical Journal (2019). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab1d52
No word on what parameters would apply to the planet Vulcan.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:37PM (1 child)
The *SUN* is an advanced form of life, and solar flares, gravity, etc are its ways of interactive with the universe around it. How do we know that solar activity is not in fact the Sun trying to communicate with other suns, or even in some cases with life on Earth?
There are many possible forms of evolution, and many of them might not interact with the universe, matter, or each other in ways that we would understand, acknowledge, or even have the individual lifespan to observe and communicate with. The wrong two species, one with an extremely long interval of life and slow responses, and one with an extremely short interval of life and fast responses might not even be able to see, remember, or interact with each other due to their varying frames of time, and states of mind.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Thursday June 13 2019, @01:13AM
Yea.. we're all just gnats on a living planet. Jupiter's coughing up a fit and Mars is dusting off its dandruff right now but we're just too non-complex to understand it.