Edward Schwieterman

Tag: Edward Schwieterman

Scientists Narrow Search After Shocking Find About Extraterrestrials

June 24, 2019
ExoNews Editor

by Sean Martin June 11, 2019 (express.co.uk)

• Scientists searching for habitable alien worlds usually focus on the ‘habitable zone’, where the region of space is neither too cold nor too warm for life to exist. Star gazers at the University of California Riverside believe that scientists have failed to take into account a build-up of toxic gasses within a planet’s atmosphere which would not allow complex life to evolve.

• For example, any planet on the coldest outer edge of the habitable zone with liquid on the surface would require carbon dioxide at levels thousands of times that of Earth’s to maintain liquid and not have it freeze, according to Edward Schwieterman, lead author of a study published in The Astrophysical Journal. “That’s far beyond the levels known to be toxic to human and animal life on Earth,” said Schwieterman.

• Another inhospitable example is intense ultraviolet radiation as from the Earth’s two closest alien stars – Proxima Centauri and TRAPPIST-1, which would batter any planets within their habitable zones, leading to a build up of poisonous carbon monoxide.

• “This is the first time the physiological limits of life on Earth have been considered to predict the distribution of complex life elsewhere in the universe,” says Timothy Lyons, one of the study’s co-authors and a professor of biogeochemistry in UCR’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and director of the Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center.

• “As far as we know, Earth is the only planet in the universe that can sustain human life,” concludes Schwieterman.

• [Editor’s Note] I’m sure that there are alien civilizations out there who consider this planet to be blanketed in a “poisonous” gas – oxygen. How can educated ‘experts’ make such ludicrous statements as “Earth is the only planet in the universe that can sustain human life”? Human-type beings exist throughout not only the universe, but throughout the galaxy and our own star system of 52 stars. This is just more disinformation calculated to make the public falsely believe that there is no alien presence on our world, or even close by. Lately, in the press there seems to be a concerted effort to push this Deep State agenda of ‘keep moving, there’s nothing to see here’.

Scientists’ search for aliens has become more focused on a smaller number of planets after making a discovery about the composition of most planets’ atmospheres. Typically, alien hunting experts have been analysing planets which are in the habitable zone of their host star – an region in space where it is neither too cold nor too warm for life to exist.

However, experts from the University of California Riverside (UCR) believe other scientists have failed to take into account a build up of toxic gasses within a planet’s atmosphere which would not allow complex life to evolve.
For example, by using computer models the researchers found that any planet on the outer edge of the habitable zone with liquid on the surface would require carbon dioxide – a greenhouse gas – levels thousands of times that of Earth’s to maintain liquid and not have it freeze.

Edward Schwieterman, lead author of the study published in The Astrophysical Journal, and a NASA Postdoctoral Program, said: “To sustain liquid water at the outer edge of the conventional habitable zone, a planet would need tens of thousands of times more carbon dioxide than Earth has today.

“That’s far beyond the levels known to be toxic to human and animal life on Earth.”

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NASA Leads New Search for Alien Life With Scientists Developing Guidebook for Finding Biosignatures

July 8, 2018
ExoNews Editor

by Athena Yenko June 27, 2018 (techtimes.com)

• A NASA project called Nexus for Exoplanet Systems Science or NExSS was formed three years ago and comprised of an international team of scientists, astrobiologists, planetary scientists, Earth scientists, heliophysicists, astrophysicists, chemists, and biologists, are searching the 3,700 exoplanets discovered in the past 30 years for signs of extraterrestrial life known as biosignatures. The initial results of the team’s work are detailed in five separate papers published in June in the journal Astrobiology.

• Biosignatures are any element, particles, molecules, or phenomenon that may have been created by alien life forms at present or left behind by the extraterrestrials in the past and serves as proof of other beings hiding or still living in one of these exoplanets.

• The scientists aim to identify as many biosignatures as they can, especially those that are not found on Earth. This way, the scientists hoped to avoid being tricked into thinking that a planet is uninhabitable just because it does not have similar biosignatures with what is found on Earth.

• “We have to be open to the possibility that life may arise in many contexts in a galaxy with so many diverse worlds — perhaps with purple-colored life instead of the familiar green-dominated life forms on Earth, for example,” explained Mary Parenteau, a coauthor of one of the papers and an astrobiologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. Edward Schwieterman, the lead author of one of the papers, said for example, the absence of oxygen in one planet is not enough basis to classify that planet as uninhabitable. Instead of focusing on whether a planet is habitable or not,experts should focus on the detectability of life on the planet.

• Another paper evaluated atmospheric conditions, the presence of oceans and continents, and its overall climate. Two other papers discussed future scientific technologies that can be used to accurately detect biosignatures even from the most distant exoplanets.

NASA is at the helm of a new project searching for signs of extraterrestrial life among the 3,700 exoplanets discovered in the past 30 years.

The project specifically aims to identify biosignatures that may have been created by alien life forms at present or left behind by the extraterrestrials in the past. Biosignatures are any element, particles, molecules, or phenomenon that serves as proof of other beings hiding or still living in one of these exoplanets.

The project, called Nexus for Exoplanet Systems Science or NExSS, was formed three years ago with the ultimate goal of finding answers to question whether humans are alone in the universe. NASA builds an international team of scientists comprised of astrobiologists, planetary scientists, Earth scientists, heliophysicists, astrophysicists, chemists, and biologists to work on the project.

Initial results of the team’s work were detailed in five separate papers published this month in the journal Astrobiology.

Ultimately, the papers all proposed ways to interpret the presence of most promising signs of life so that humans may distinguish another living world that might have been masquerading as a barren planet all along. They wanted to make way to pass the stage of theorizing to finally coming up with robust scientific proof.

“Given the massive implications of detecting an alien biosphere on an exoplanet, we’re going to need all the tools in the toolbox to build up a sufficient level of confidence in our findings,” said Theresa Fisher, a contributing author in one of the papers and a geological science graduate from Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration.

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