(ORDO NEWS) — How can you find traces of living beings in the cosmic void? Astrobiologist Tomonori Totani of the University of Tokyo suggests starting with space dust.
Despite many years of efforts, scientists have not found evidence of the existence of life outside the Earth. There are two possible reasons for this.
First, the Earth may be the only place in the universe where life originated and developed. Secondly, because of the huge distances, we simply cannot collect enough data.
And the Japanese astrobiologist Tomonori Totani proposed to overcome the second problem by studying cosmic dust that has already reached our planet.
Some of this dust may be of alien origin if it is blasted off habitable planets by asteroid impacts. In this case, by analyzing the composition of this dust, traces of the presence of living beings can be found.
Totani suggests that the optimal size of suitable dust particles is about a micrometer: such dust particles are large enough to bear evidence of life, but small enough that if an asteroid hits, they avoid falling to their home planet.
According to the researcher, about 100 thousand such dust particles land on Earth every year, and the task of scientists is to find and study them.
As Totani noted in a press release for his article, finding evidence of alien life can be complicated by terrestrial biosignals, so dust collection should be done in places where there are relatively few terrestrial organisms: for example, on ice caps or in the upper layers of the atmosphere.
It is also possible to develop a technology for collecting dust directly in outer space using aerogels.
Although the likelihood that the result of an asteroid impact on a habitable planet will reach Earth, avoiding all the dangers of outer space, seems vanishingly small, Totani is confident that sooner or later the study of cosmic dust will bear fruit.
And while it is unlikely that we will know where a particular speck of dust came from, finding traces of life on it will allow us to answer once and for all the question of whether we are alone in the Universe.
—
Online:
Contact us: [email protected]
Our Standards, Terms of Use: Standard Terms And Conditions.