Nicola Jones wrote "Frontier experiments: Tough science" in the January 4 issue of Nature. The first two frontiers relate to the origin of life from different angles: astrobiology and biophysics.
1. Spotting distant life. Aside from finding that we can eavesdrop on alien TV, how would it be possible to discover life around other stars? It's harder than it sounds. The favored method would be to look for biomarkers, such as an oxygen atmosphere, on an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone of a star. Detection would require getting a spectrum from the atmosphere as the planet transits the star. Unfortunately, no telescope today has the required sensitivity to pick out "less than one photon in a million" to identify oxygen, a "signal that is ridiculously small." If the funding-plagued James Webb Space Telescope ever gets launched later this decade, it might have the sensitivity to get the data. Even so, that could potentially identify oxygen, not life. Till then, "astrobiology" remains all astro and no biology; it's a contrived science without a subject.
Undoubtedly, some evolutionists would consider the detection of alien life, even slime, a triumph for Darwinism. They would leap to the conclusion -- actually, they long ago leaped to the conclusion -- that we are no longer "special" or unique. That inference is empty; it rests on Darwinian assumptions that only evolution can produce life. Intelligent Design makes no claim that life on Earth is unique. If every star had an Earth-like planet teeming with life, would that be a problem for ID? Absolutely not. Historically, many scientists, religious and secular, assumed life was common on other worlds even within our own solar system. The argument for design does not rest on the number of trials, but on the existence of specified complexity. If the European discovery of human inhabitants in the New World didn't defeat the argument for design, then neither will the discovery of inhabitants on New Worlds. To date, though, the non-detection of alien life amplifies the design inference.
To read more, click here.