The search for extraterrestrial life has long gone back and forth between scientific curiosity, public fascination and outright scepticism. Recently, scientists claimed the “strongest evidence” of life on a distant exoplanet – a world outside our solar system.
Grandiose headlines often promise proof that we are not alone, but scientists remain cautious. Is this caution unique to the field of astrobiology? In truth, major scientific breakthroughs are rarely accepted quickly.
Newton’s laws of motion and gravity, Wegener’s theory of plate tectonics, and human-made climate change all faced prolonged scrutiny before achieving consensus.
But does the nature of the search for extraterrestrial life mean that extraordinary claims require even more extraordinary evidence? We’ve seen groundbreaking evidence in this search beforehand, from claims of biosignatures (potential signs of life) in Venus’s atmosphere to Nasa rovers finding “leopard spots” – a potential sign of past microbial activity – in a Martian rock.
Both stories generated a public buzz around the idea that we might be one step closer to finding alien life. But on further inspection, abiotic (non-biological) processes or false detection became more likely explanations.
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