Future Evidence for Extraterrestrial Life Might Come from Dying Stars

It seems that looking for Extraterrestrial life on the most extreme places is something more plausible then to look closer at home I sometimes think.But anyway they seem to pick up oxygen much better from white dwarfs orbiting planets,much more easily than for an Earth-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star.

Astronomers are particularly interested in finding oxygen because the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere is continuously replenished, through photosynthesis, by plant life. Were all life to cease on Earth, our atmosphere would quickly become devoid of oxygen, which would dissolve in the oceans and oxidize the surface. Thus, the presence of large quantities of oxygen in the atmosphere of a distant planet would signal the likely presence of life there.

CFA

Peace

reply to post by 0bserver1


Why are we fixated on oxygen having to be known for an alien? If we are unaware of any ET life anywhere, why do they have to breath oxygen?? I don't understand....

Or if they do, whose to say they don't have a suit that can create oxygen from whatever gas planet they live on?

I think for this to be true, they have to know ET's are out there and they 100% for sure breathe oxygen to survive....IMO

reply to post by Chrisfishenstein


That's because we want to search for biological life I think?.. Other life on planets that we can't enter due to pressures or other gases non breathable , what kind of life could do that ?

reply to post by Chrisfishenstein

Why are we fixated on oxygen having to be known for an alien? If we are unaware of any ET life anywhere, why do they have to breath oxygen??

My guess is we can only look for life as we know it because we will recognize that , life as we don't know it could play by any rules .

It makes sense to me to believe that most plant life will use photosynthesis unless it learns to hunt , so oxygen should be present .

reply to post by gortex


Yes. I think it's possible that we could possibly be looking directly at "life as we DON'T know it" and not even recognize it as life. "Life as we know it" would be easier for us to recognize.

reply to post by Chrisfishenstein


Because Oxygen is a consequence of life,so if they find oxygen anywere they now there is a high probabibility that life exist.

What you are saying is like, looking at Jupiter and guessing there is life there, I think looking for oxygen has a higer percentage for life detection.

reply to post by muSSang


No you misunderstood me.....I never stated life is anywhere. High probability? Yes......But I am saying why does oxygen have to be present to establish alien life can exist there?

What if they are made to breath a different way, and not use oxygen to breathe? I am just throwing that out there...

Originally posted by Chrisfishenstein
reply to post by muSSang

 

No you misunderstood me.....I never stated life is anywhere. High probability? Yes......But I am saying why does oxygen have to be present to establish alien life can exist there?

What if they are made to breath a different way, and not use oxygen to breathe? I am just throwing that out there...

Most astrobiologists would agree with you. Life may NOT breathe oxygen. I know that Chris McKay (NASA's leading astrobiologist) agrees with you.

However, it all comes back to considering what tools we have for looking for life. Looking for certain levels/ratios of gases and elements that we KNOW would show evidence of life in exoplanet atmospheres is ONE tool we have to look for life. It's a tool, so we use it. It is a process understood to us, so if we see those ratios of those gasses, we know maybe life may exist there.

What you are saying is that maybe alien life uses some other elemental gasses in their respiration processes. Maybe they do, but that's not the point here. We don't know what those processes would be, so we wouldn't really know what to look for. At least we understand Earth's life processes enough to look for that type of evidence.

Again, how would we recognize "life as we DON'T know it" when we see it? Could it be so foreign that we may not notice it is even life at all?