Caleb Scharf Director of Astrobiology: Columbia University Blog: Life Unbounded (Scientific American) Author: Textook: Extrasolar planets and astrobiology Author: The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities

How will humanity first discover ET Life? Best guess: Biosignatures   The question “will we recognize life when we see it?” is as important as the technique question. We may find extraterrestrial life through an accumulation of evidence before we’re lucky enough for it to “land in our lap”. We may find piecemeal evidence here in our Solar System, in the atmospheres of exoplanets and conceivably in strange phenomena that might best be explained through technosignatures. We will find evidence that life is “at large” in the cosmos even if its precise nature eludes us. Maybe it is evidence for biosignatures changing the environments of exoplanets in systematic ways.

Plot of Believable versus Informative: Solar System

Plot of Believable versus Informative: Exoplanetws

Plot of Believable versus Informative: Technosignatures

We may find extraterrestrial life through an accumulation of evidence before we're lucky enough for an example to 'land in our lap'

Return to 100th Anniversary Page