How Researchers Will Carry Out the Search for Extraterrestrial Life

The sun breaks over the surface of another planet in this illustration, potentially revealing the gases that make up its atmosphere. (Credit: sdecoret/Shutterstock) Is there life beyond our planet? Astronomers have asked that question ever since we realized that there actually was something beyond our planet. Given the vastness of the universe, however, we're not likely to journey out and meet it for ourselves anytime soon. Instead, astronomers are searching for a way to bridge the vast distances of interstellar space and search for subtle signs of life on other planets from right here on Earth. SETI has garnered attention for its far-reaching aim: to make contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. Other experiments, from the Golden Record tucked away in the Voyager missions, to the recently proposed Starshot program, hope that other civilizations will notice our wandering spacecraft. If there is life, it will likely reveal itself through signs much more subtle than, say, a Dyson sphere. Instead, some astronomers are pinning their hopes on "biosignature" gases, molecules in a planet's atmosphere that could only be produced by living organisms and observed from our corner of the universe. The telescopes of the near-future promise to give us the capability to peer into the atmospheres of distant planets and pick out their composition. But if life sends out gaseous greetings, what gases should we be "sniffing" for?