The search for alien life combines multiple scientific disciplines in our quest to determine if we’re alone in the cosmos, reports universetoday.com. Scientists hunt for biosignatures in exoplanet atmospheres, explore potentially habitable worlds in our own Solar System like Mars and Europa, and scan for artificial signals that might indicate intelligent civilizations. This process forces us to question our very definition of life, as extraterrestrial organisms could utilize biochemistry vastly different from Earth’s carbon based systems. Despite no definitive contact yet, discoveries of potentially habitable worlds and extremophiles thriving in Earth’s harshest environments suggest life may be common throughout the Universe. If life on other planets could be so different from Earth’s then it’s going to be hard to know what signs to look for. In their paper published in Nature Communications, Akshit Goyal (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research) and Mikhail Tikhonov (Washington University) suggests focusing on ecosystems rather than specific life forms. By modelling how organisms compete for resources and interact ecologically, it might be possible to identify universal biosignatures that don’t depend on Earth like biology or specific metabolic processes. One aspect that is recognized as a universal trait of life is the consumption of energy consumption and transformation. Image credit: NASA While previous approaches suggested identifying life through chemical imbalances or energy flux patterns, they lacked a specific criteria to distinguish biological from non-biological processes. In the paper, the researchers combine the energy perspective with a key observation: life forms virtually never exist in isolation, but develop into competitive ecosystems with ecological interactions. With only one known exception on Earth, the formation of ecosystems appears to be nearly as fundamental to life as evolution itself. Volcanoes like the Augustine Volcano in Alaska can produce chemical signatures that can be mistaken for life. (Credit : Alaska Volcano Observatory) Even if we can settle on the criteria to search for, finding these universal signs of life involves challenges. While energy use is common to all life, distinguishing biological from non-biological processes remains difficult with today’s technology. This paper concludes a new approach: looking for spatial layering of chemicals arranged by their energy content! This layering naturally emerges from two universal features of life: self-replication and competition between species. Together, these features create patterns where high-energy resources are depleted faster and different organisms become spatially separated. Unlike traditional biosignatures tied to specific Earth like metabolisms, this pattern would arise from ecosystem competition regardless of the biochemistry involved. While non-biological processes can create layered structures, they typically aren’t organized by energy content. The main limitation though is the practical implementation, as such patterns might be difficult to detect with current technology, especially through remote sensing. Alas travelling to distant alien worlds around other star systems is also beyond our capability and so we have to rely upon remote sensing techniques. The post Researchers Propose a New Way to Search for Evidence of Alien Life appeared first on Anomalien.com.