Overview
- The Nature Astronomy study, released Tuesday, introduces a statistics-based biosignature that separates biological from abiotic chemistry.
- Researchers adapted ecology tools that track richness and evenness, which measure how many molecule types are present and how uniformly they appear.
- Across about 100 datasets from microbes, soils, fossils, meteorites, asteroids, and lab syntheses, the method repeatedly distinguished living from nonliving samples.
- Amino acids from life showed greater variety and a more even spread, while nonbiological fatty acids were more evenly distributed than those from organisms.
- Because the signal survives heavy degradation, including in fossilized dinosaur eggshells, mission teams could probe existing Mars, Europa, and Enceladus data for it using current instruments.