NASA scientists propose new 'alien life evidence' scale

 As the search for extraterrestrial life heats up, scientists may need to step up their reporting game a bit.
Researchers should report evidence for alien life on a scale similar to the technological readiness level scale commonly used to assess the readiness of spaceflight components, a new paper argues. The goal is to make the search for life less "binary" — life or no life — and to express it more accurately in terms of agreed-upon scientific uncertainty.
The newly proposed alien-life evidence scale was outlined in a study published online Oct. 27 in the journal Nature that was led by NASA chief scientist Jim Green. The scale includes seven levels, which are subject to change depending on the type of environment involved and how the scientific community responds. 

For a Mars mission, for example, finding hints of a signature of life would register at Level 1 on the scale, and showing that the discovery was not due to contamination by Earth life would raise it to Level 2. The highest levels include verifying signs of life with several instruments (Level 6) and in different locations on a world (Level 7).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gas station in space’: new plan to make rocket fuel from junk in Earth’s orbit

Image
  Australian company joins global effort to recycle dangerous space debris An Australian company is part of an international effort to recycle dangerous space junk into rocket fuel – in space. The orbit our planet depends on is getting clogged with debris from old spacecraft. Dead satellites and spent rocket parts are whizzing around at speeds of up to 28,000 kilometres an hour, posing a threat to communications satellites and the International  Space  Station. At those speeds, even a small screw or a  fleck of paint  poses a risk to facilities such as the ISS, as well as the humans in them. ‘A wild west out there’: Russian satellite debris worsens space junk problem Read more Last weekend, Russia fired a missile and  destroyed one of its own satellites , sending debris flying. The United States said that debris now “threatens the interests of all nations”. The worst-case scenario is cascading collisions between smaller and smaller bits of space junk until ...
Read more

ELON MUSK SAYS SPACEX COULD LAUNCH STARSHIP ORBITAL FLIGHT TEXT NEXT MONTH

Image
SpaceX's Starship SN20 prototype could make its first orbital test flight as soon as next month. This visualization depicts SpaceX's Starship could launch on its first uncrewed flight to Mars in 2024.   (Image credit: SpaceX) SpaceX's latest Starship prototype could blast off into orbit earlier than   SpaceX completed a successful static fire test  with its SN20 Starship prototype. This was a major hurdle for the spacecraft ahead of its first orbital flight test, which SpaceX had previously stated would likely happen within a couple of months. But now,  SpaceX  founder Elon Musk has said that the launch could happen as soon as next month.  "If all goes well,  Starship  will be ready for its first orbital launch attempt next month, pending regulatory approval," Musk  tweeted  today .
Read more

Is there life at Alpha Centauri? New space telescope to seek out habitable planets around sun's neighboring star

Image
  The new TOLIMAN space telescope could launch in the mid-2020s. A new space telescope mission unveiled today (Nov. 16) will look for habitable planets in the Alpha Centauri system, our sun's closest stellar neighbors.  The new mission, called TOLIMAN after an ancient Arabic-derived name for  Alpha Centauri , will carry a novel telescope fitted with a so-called diffractive pupil lens that spreads starlight into a flowerlike pattern. This unique lens will make it easier for astronomers using the scope to detect tiny irregularities in a stars' movements that are usually caused by the gravitational influence of orbiting planets, according to  a statement  by Breakthrough Initiatives, which is backing the mission. "Even for the very nearest bright stars in the night sky, finding planets is a huge technological challenge," Eduardo Bendek, an optical engineer at NASA's  Jet Propulsion Laboratory , a collaborator on the mission, said in the statement.  "Our T...
Read more