EARTH.COM - Space agencies have spent decades designing life-detection instruments around a single idea: biology leaves specific molecules behind.
Send the right probe, find the right chemicals, and the question of whether life existed answers itself.
The idea has a flaw. Those same molecules form without life in cold meteorite chemistry and deep-sea vents.
A new study argues that the real fingerprint isn’t which molecules appear – it’s the hidden statistical pattern in the way they’re distributed.
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The diversity test revealed something the team did not expect. Beyond clearly separating life from non-life, it also appeared to detect signs of degradation.
“That was genuinely surprising. The method captured not only the distinction between life and nonlife, but also degrees of preservation and alteration,” said Fabian Klenner, assistant professor of planetary sciences at the University of California, Riverside (UCR).