Astrobiology by Andrew May

Author:Andrew May [Andrew May]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785783432
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
Published: 2019-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

5

STARTING SMALL

After all the excitement of interstellar messages and alien megastructures in the previous two chapters, it may seem like a backward step to start talking about far more primitive forms of life. In a sense it is, but the emergence of such forms on Earth was the first step on the only path we know of that leads to intelligence.

Actually there’s sound logic behind the ordering of the chapters. Virtually all the science in this chapter and the next is newer than anything we’ve talked about so far. Concepts like the Drake equation, Dyson spheres and von Neumann probes all date from the early 1960s, while the search for exoplanets and possible ‘biosignatures’ only took off in the 21st century. Equally new is the study of extremophiles here on Earth, which show us that the range of environments in which life can thrive is much wider than used to be imagined.

The discovery of biosignatures indicating the presence of life on an exoplanet – or maybe even on a planet or moon here in the Solar System – may not seem as exciting as picking up a radio message from aliens, or spotting an artificial megastructure around a nearby star. But the fact that primitive lifeforms have existed on Earth for so much longer than advanced ones implies that they’ll be a much more common occurrence in the galaxy – and hence, in principle, easier for us to find. And the way we go about finding them has an excitement of its own – albeit the excitement of a detective story rather than that of a sci-fi blockbuster.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.