Lifeboat Foundation

If there is a high probability of alien life, why has none tried to make contact?

You have probably heard of the Fermi Paradox, but if you haven’t, here it is in a nutshell: Given the high probability that alien life exists out there in the universe (bearing in mind the vastness of space and that we keep finding planets within habitable zones) why has nobody got in touch yet? If there are so many other civilizations out there, possibly at far more advanced stages than we are because of how long the universe has dragged on, surely at least one would send out messages or probes, or do what we are doing: Desperately searching for signs of life?

Answers to the paradox range from the optimistic to the downright frightening. It could be that we simply haven’t been looking long enough, nor emitting our own traceable signatures for aliens to find us yet. Or it could be that no aliens will ever make it to the point where they are able to make contact with other species, destroying themselves long before they get to the kind of tech required to do so.

In the quest to understand the potential for life beyond Earth, researchers are widening their search to encompass not only biological markers, but also technological ones. While astrobiologists have long recognized the importance of oxygen for life as we know it, oxygen could also be a key to unlocking advanced technology on a planetary scale.

In a new perspective published in Nature Astronomy, Adam Frank, the Helen F. and Fred H. Gowen Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester and the author of The Little Book of Aliens (Harper, 2023), and Amedeo Balbi, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Roma Tor Vergata, Italy, outline the links between atmospheric oxygen and the potential rise of advanced technology on distant planets.

“We are ready to find signatures of life on alien worlds,” Frank says. “But how do the conditions on a planet tell us about the possibilities for intelligent, technology-producing life?”

The TOI-700 star system is home to four planets, including two in its habitable zone that could host liquid water.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

NASA recently announced the discovery of a new, Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of a nearby star called TOI-700. We are two of the astronomers who led the discovery of this planet, called TOI-700 e is just over 100 light-years from Earth — too far away for humans to visit — but we do know that it is similar in size to Earth, likely rocky in composition and could potentially support life.

January 8, 2024, Mountain View, CA — In a groundbreaking cosmic quest, the SETI Institute’s Commensal Open-Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster (COSMIC) at the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) is expanding the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). This cutting-edge technology is not a distinct telescope; it’s a detector. COSMIC searches for extraterrestrial signals and paves the way for future science using a copy of the raw data from the telescope’s observations. At the heart of COSMIC’s mission is pursuing the age-old question: Are we alone in the universe? Project scientist Dr. Chenoa Tremblay and the team detailed the project in a paper published in The Astronomical Journal.

What sets COSMIC apart is its adaptability to the future. The system is designed for future upgrades, ensuring it remains at the forefront of cosmic exploration. With the potential to expand its capabilities, COSMIC could soon cover more stars, explore new frequencies, and enhance our understanding of the vast cosmic tapestry. It is important to note that COSMIC’s capabilities go beyond searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. Future upgrades could unlock new explorations, from finding fast radio bursts with a submillisecond temporal resolution to studying spectral line science and axionic dark matter.

“COSMIC introduces modern Ethernet-based digital architecture on the VLA, allowing for a test bed for future technologies as we move into the next generation era,” said Tremblay. “Currently, the focus is on creating one of the largest surveys for technological signals, with over 500,000 sources observed in the first six months. However, the flexibility of the design allows for a wide range of other scientific opportunities, such as studying fast radio burst pulse structures and searching for axion dark matter candidates. We hope to open opportunities for other scientists to use our high time (nanoseconds) or our high spectral resolution (sub-Hz) to complete their research. It is an exciting time for increasing the capabilities of this historic telescope.”

https://trib.al/2HpyN4k The new SETI experiment is being conducted on the Very Large Array of radio telescopes.

For decades, science fiction authors have imagined scenarios in which life thrives on the harsh surfaces of Mars or our moon, or in the oceans below the icy surfaces of Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa. But the study of habitability—the conditions required to support and sustain life—is not just confined to the pages of fiction. As more planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond are investigated for their potential to host conditions favorable to life, researchers are debating how to characterize habitability.

While many studies have focused on the information obtained by orbiting spacecraft or telescopes that provide snapshot views of ocean worlds and exoplanets, a new paper emphasizes the importance of investigating complex geophysical factors that can be used to predict the long-term maintenance of life. These factors include how energy and nutrients flow throughout the planet.

“Time is a crucial factor in characterizing habitability,” says Mark Simons, John W. and Herberta M. Miles Professor of Geophysics at Caltech. “You need time for evolution to happen. To be habitable for a millisecond or a year is not enough. But if habitable conditions are sustained for a million years, or a billion…? Understanding a planet’s habitability takes a nuanced perspective that requires astrobiologists and geophysicists to talk to each other.”

“We think that the HD 144,432 disk may be very similar to the early Solar System that provided lots of iron to the rocky planets we know today,” said Dr. Roy van Boekel.

How did our solar system form and is this process similar in other solar systems throughout the universe? This is what a study published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics hopes to figure out as a team of international researchers used data from the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) to analyze the protoplanetary disk around HD 144,432, which is a young star located approximately 500 light-years from Earth. This study holds the potential to not only help researchers better understand the formation and evolution of solar systems, but also gain greater insight into how life could evolve in these systems, as well.

“When studying the dust distribution in the disk’s innermost region, we detected for the first time a complex structure in which dust piles up in three concentric rings in such an environment,” said Dr. Roy van Boekel, who is a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) and one of more than three dozen co-authors on the study. “That region corresponds to the zone where the rocky planets formed in the Solar System.”

Continue reading “Complex Ring System Around Young Star Resembles Early Solar System Formation” »

A low carbon abundance in planetary atmospheres could be a signature of habitability. Scientists at MIT, the University of Birmingham, and elsewhere say that astronomers’ best chance of finding liquid water, and even life on other planets, is to look for the absence, rather than the presence, of a chemical feature in their atmospheres.

The researchers propose that if a terrestrial planet has substantially less CO₂ in its atmosphere compared to other planets in the same system, it could be a sign of liquid water — and possibly life — on that planet’s surface.

What’s more, this new signature is within the sights of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). While scientists have proposed other signs of habitability, those features are challenging if not impossible to measure with current technologies. The team says this new signature, of relatively depleted carbon dioxide, is the only sign of habitability that is detectable now.