Is there life on Earth?
Abstract
Earth is the only planet known to be saturated with life since billions of years. Micro-organisms, viruses, fungi and DNA fragments have been found in the Earth atmosphere at various altitudes. Can those manifestations of life be detected from their interactions with the sun light? In other words, would far observers be able to detect the presence for instance of DNA in the Earth atmosphere through spectroscopic observations? Inversely, could a terrestrial observer detect life manifestations in the atmosphere of an exoplanet? Before thinking of life detection on another planet, the first step is to verify if life is detectable in the Earth atmosphere. In this context, laboratory experiments were performed by taking FT-IR spectra of different bacteria and of free DNA (damaged and not damaged). They were then compared with atmospheric spectra, taken from astronomical observations at high airmass in the same band width. First results are surprisingly interesting since a common pattern appear.
- Publication:
-
Memorie della Societa Astronomica Italiana
- Pub Date:
- 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019MmSAI..90..611B