#biosignature — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #biosignature, aggregated by home.social.
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Here is a problem that has been quietly gnawing at astronomers for decades.
The standard approach to detecting #life on other worlds involves scanning #exoplanet #atmospheres for #oxygen, #methane, and #ozone, whose presence is difficult to explain without #biology.
It's a clever idea, but it carries a hidden flaw. That entire shopping list was written by studying Earth. It is, inevitably, a search for life like us.
The list of ways that #chemistry alone can accidentally mimic these #biosignature gases is growing faster than the list of new ways to detect life.
Each new false positive scenario demands even more information about the #planet to rule it out, and there is a genuine question about whether that information can ever be gathered exhaustively.
But there is a solution.
#Assembly theory doesn't ask what #molecules are present in an #atmosphere. Instead, it asks how hard they were to make.
Every molecule can be assigned an assembly index, a minimum number of construction steps required to build it from basic #chemical building blocks.
Simple molecules are easy to assemble by chance, but truly complex ones, requiring many sequential steps, don't arise without something doing a great deal of deliberate selection.
That something would then be life itself.
#astrobiology #astronomy
https://phys.org/news/2026-03-life.htmlPaper by Walker et al. (2026): https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.11086
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3I/ATLAS: ALMA Detects Most Enriched Concentration Of Methanol And Hydrogen Cyanide Observed In Any Comet Ever
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#Phosphorus Prepared #Earth For Complex #Life And Could Be A Valuable #Biosignature
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Hackaday Links: September 14, 2025 - Is it finally time to cue up the Bowie? Or was the NASA presser on Wednesday annou... - https://hackaday.com/2025/09/14/hackaday-links-september-14-2025/ #manhattanproject #hackadaycolumns #hackadaylinks #biosignature #perseverance #nuclear #slider #atomic #redox #retro #video #mars #nasa #crt
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Pontential sign of Ancient life☺️
NASA Says Mars Rover Discovered Potential Biosignature Last Year
https://nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-says-mars-rover-discovered-potential-biosignature-last-year/
#Astrobiology #Mars #Mars2020 #Perseverance #JezeroCrater #Mars2020Mission #Nasa #MarsRover #MarsSampleReturn #MSR #Biosignature -
The #Perseverance press conference panel consists of 5 NASA managers and 1 Mars researcher - so the topic is likely some follow-up to "the
discovery of a potential #biosignature" in an outcrop reported earlier this year in https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20250001217/downloads/Hurowitz%20et%20al%20LPSC.pdf while the specific rock to be discussed today was shown in April in https://science.nasa.gov/resource/meet-the-mars-samples-sapphire-canyon-sample-25/ and mentioned in August in https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1094171 and the O-PTIR #spectroscopy method to hunt for microbial markers was discussed in March in https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/press/z0508_00392.html -
Thick Clay Layers On Mars May Have Been A Stable Place For Ancient Life
https://astrobiology.com/2025/06/thick-clay-layers-on-mars-may-have-been-a-stable-place-for-ancient-life.html
#Astrobiologie #Astrobiology #Mars #Biosignature #Biosignatur #Science #Wissenschaft #Astrogeologie #Astrogeology -
Thick Clay Layers On Mars May Have Been A Stable Place For Ancient Life
https://astrobiology.com/2025/06/thick-clay-layers-on-mars-may-have-been-a-stable-place-for-ancient-life.html
#Astrobiologie #Astrobiology #Mars #Biosignature #Biosignatur #Science #Wissenschaft #Astrogeologie #Astrogeology -
Thick Clay Layers On Mars May Have Been A Stable Place For Ancient Life
https://astrobiology.com/2025/06/thick-clay-layers-on-mars-may-have-been-a-stable-place-for-ancient-life.html
#Astrobiologie #Astrobiology #Mars #Biosignature #Biosignatur #Science #Wissenschaft #Astrogeologie #Astrogeology -
Thick Clay Layers On Mars May Have Been A Stable Place For Ancient Life
https://astrobiology.com/2025/06/thick-clay-layers-on-mars-may-have-been-a-stable-place-for-ancient-life.html
#Astrobiologie #Astrobiology #Mars #Biosignature #Biosignatur #Science #Wissenschaft #Astrogeologie #Astrogeology -
Thick Clay Layers On Mars May Have Been A Stable Place For Ancient Life
https://astrobiology.com/2025/06/thick-clay-layers-on-mars-may-have-been-a-stable-place-for-ancient-life.html
#Astrobiologie #Astrobiology #Mars #Biosignature #Biosignatur #Science #Wissenschaft #Astrogeologie #Astrogeology -
Great, interesting study!😊😀
"Multiscale astrobiology with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time"
https://frontiersin.org/journals/astronomy-and-space-sciences/articles/10.3389/fspas.2025.1594485/full
#Astrobiology #RubinObservatory #science #Exoplanet #Biosignature #life #universe #LSST -
Hackaday Links: April 20, 2025 https://hackaday.com/2025/04/20/hackaday-links-april-20-2025/ #vegetativeelectronmicroscopy #HackadayColumns #scientificfraud #Hackadaylinks #hackadaylinks #siliconvalley #biosignature #antikythera #Zuckerberg #crosswalk #deep-fake #exoplanet #JamesWebb #citation #PaloAlto #Slider #K2-18b #Kepler #tooth #DMDS #gear #jwst #Musk #DMS
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Hackaday Links: April 20, 2025 - We appear to be edging ever closer to a solid statement of “We are not alone” in t... - https://hackaday.com/2025/04/20/hackaday-links-april-20-2025/ #vegetativeelectronmicroscopy #hackadaycolumns #scientificfraud #hackadaylinks #siliconvalley #biosignature #antikythera #zuckerberg #crosswalk #deep-fake #exoplanet #jameswebb #citation #paloalto #slider #k2-18b #kepler #tooth #dmds #gear #jwst #musk #dms
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“The idea of searching for resulting ‘ #technosignatures’ as remotely detectable evidence of #extraterrestrial #technology follows the same logic as exoplanet #biosignature #science” aeon.co/essays/why-w...
Why we’re searching for alien ... -
Astronomers have detected the most promising signs yet of a possible #biosignature outside the solar system, although they remain cautious.
They have detected the chemical fingerprints of dimethyl sulfide and/or dimethyl disulfide, in the #atmosphere of the #exoplanet K2-18b, which orbits its star in the #habitable zone.
On Earth, theyare only produced by #life, primarily microbial life such as marine phytoplankton.
#astronomy #astrobiology
https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/strongest-hints-of-biological-activity -
The upcoming extremely large telescopes will provide the first opportunity to search for signs of #habitability and #life on non-transiting #terrestrial #exoplanets.
For the most accessible nearby target, #Proxima Centauri b, we may be able to rule out a sub-Neptune #atmosphere in as little as a single hour of observing, and some #biosignature disequilibrium pairs may be accessible in 10 hours.
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Hackaday Links: May 12, 2024 - Don’t pack your bags for the trip to exoplanet K2-18b quite yet — it turns out tha... - https://hackaday.com/2024/05/12/hackaday-links-may-12-2024/ #launchcontrolcenter #fuzzybunnyslippers #semiconductorfab #hackadaycolumns #dimethylsulfide #hackadaylinks #biosignature #bluetooth #exoplante #minuteman #satellite #fortran #slider #k2-18b #survey #icbm
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Hackaday Links: May 12, 2024 https://hackaday.com/2024/05/12/hackaday-links-may-12-2024/ #launchcontrolcenter #fuzzybunnyslippers #semiconductorfab #HackadayColumns #dimethylsulfide #Hackadaylinks #hackadaylinks #biosignature #bluetooth #exoplante #Minuteman #satellite #FORTRAN #Slider #K2-18b #survey #ICBM
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We are inching closer and closer to reliably detecting #biosignatures on distant #planets.
Much of the focus is on determining which chemicals indicate #life's presence.
But life can also create free energy in a system, and excess energy can create chemical disequilibrium. That's what happened on Earth when life got going.
Could chemical disequilibrium be a #biosignature?
#astronomy #astrobiology #exoplanets
https://phys.org/news/2023-11-life-easiest-planets-earlier-earth.htmlPaper by Young et al. (2023):
https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.06083