"Despite science fiction's fondness for alien invasions, the first signs of life on another planet most likely won't come from radio beacons, let alone ships decimating the White House with giant energy beam. They may not come from Earth robots hunting for life, either. Instead, the first evidence for life may be in the form of passive signals, telltale signs of life and its processes, that astronomers will find in a planet's atmosphere. And those could very well come from the most passive life forms we know: plants.
Planets that have atmospheres at all are a good place to start looking for life — as far as we know, life (of any sort) needs a layer of gas covering a rocky world, which provides energy sources and protection from the unfriendly environment of space. "
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www.dvice.com
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For years, astronomers have been hunting for other planets capable of supporting life. Those efforts have relied on ground-based telescopes and spacecraft, in an attempt to identify clues about the conditions of worlds thousands of light years away. But the entire search depends on one fundamental, widely-accepted premise — that these planets must exist within the "habitable zone," a narrow band around other stars where an orbiting planet’s surface would not be too hot, but also not too cold, to support liquid water. Now, several astronomers are making a provocative suggestion: broaden the search far beyond planets like Earth, to include other strange worlds, from Dune-like planets with almost no liquid water, to gaseous giants with atmospheres full of hydrogen."
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www.theverge.com
"For years, astronomers have been hunting for other planets capable of supporting life. Those efforts have relied on ground-based telescopes and spacecraft, in an attempt to identify clues about the conditions of worlds thousands of light years away. But the entire search depends on one fundamental, widely-accepted premise — that these planets must exist within the "habitable zone," a narrow band around other stars where an orbiting planet’s surface would not be too hot, but also not too cold, to support liquid water. Now, several astronomers are making a provocative suggestion: broaden the search far beyond planets like Earth, to include other strange worlds, from Dune-like planets with almost no liquid water, to gaseous giants with atmospheres full of hydrogen."
