If humanity is ever going to find life on another planet in the solar system, it's probably best to know where to look. Plenty of scientists have spent many, many hours pondering precisely that question, and plenty have come up with justifications for backing a particular place in the solar system as the most likely to hold the potential for harboring life as we know it. Thanks to a team led by Dimitra Atri of NYU Abu Dhabi, we now have a methodology by which to rank them.
The methodology, published in a recent preprint paper on arXiv, is focused on a new variable—the Microbial Habitability Index (MHI). MHI is intended to measure how habitable a specific environment is for the various types of extremophiles found in extreme places here on Earth.
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