Looking Beyond The Vatican Observatory and the University of Arizona co-hosted a conference on The search for life beyond the Solar System. Exoplanets, Biosignatures & instruments from March 16-21 in Tucson Arizona, home of the Observatorys major research infrastructure the I.8-M te1escope on Mt Graham. This conference was a demonstration of the close and fruitful collaboration between the University of Arizona and the Vatican Observatory, which dates back to 1980.It was the major event of the year in the field, in the U.S. and Internationally, made all the more important because NASA is not holding its biannual Astrobiology Science Conference this year .Astrobiology is an interdisciplinary scientific pursuit of life in the broadest context, of its cosmic abundance, origins, future, and, indeed, its nature. For practical purposes one can say that the term is roughly synonymous with the now less frequent exobiology and coextensive with the term bioastronomy” preferred by the International Astronomical Union, designating it as a subdomain of astronomy and reflecting the fact that most researchers in the field are astrophysicists. A classical definition by genus and species presupposes the knowledge of a large number of instances of the giving genus. With life, we are only aware of one occurrence, making a definition and any generalizations very precarious. In any practical terms, many conjectures have to be made when searching for life without a clear notion of what we are looking for. The current research focuses of four broad areas: exploring the extreme extent of life on earth, that is to say, the extremophilic organisms, biochemical studies of the origins of life, exploring the Solar System - Mars, Titan, Europa, Enceladus -- bodies in situ, and spectroscopic remote study of planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, that is to say, extra solar planets or Exoplanets. The Conference primarily addressed the matter, which, however, would have been impossible without sharing among researchers mainly working in the first two areas. Recent discoveries are rapidly increasing the number of known earth-sized planets. Meanwhile scientists are finding a likewise increasing range of extreme conditions in which life on earth can persist. But what techniques and technologies will al low us to search for such life on these Exoplanets? To address this multifaceted challenge the 200 scientists attending the Conference shared their expertise on exoplanet observations, early and extreme life on earth, atmospheric biosignatures and planet-finding telescopes. One of the main debates in astrobiology is the sequence of steps that would al low us to learn more about life beyond the Solar System. Exoplanets are out of reach of our probes, and the only viable option in the coming decades if not centuries, is remote sensing, spectroscopicly analyzing the light reflected or emitted by these bodies. There is a major technical challenge how to distinguish the exoplanet’s light from the light of its parent star. Several methods are available but still require a lot of work. The conference served the crucial purpose of bringing people together to discuss how best to proceed. And thanks to the Conference, a consensus is closer than it was before ....conclusion.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 10:42:53 +0000
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