Life on Mars: What can the use of biosignatures tell us about our comprehension of life process?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69976/aspast.v1n1.1Keywords:
Biosignatures, Life concept, prebiotic chemistryAbstract
Astrobiology is one of the fastest expanding scientific fields today. Among the various issues that this area of knowledge faces, the search for life outside our planet proves to be especially challenging. When it comes to identifying life beyond our planet, one of the most difficult challenges is the use of biosignatures. Biosignatures can be seen as any molecule or process, that comes from biological activity and can indicate the existence of life at some point, in the present or past, in each environment. The identification of biosignatures that can clearly distinguish between evidence of life or just an artifact produced by other natural processes represents a practical and theoretical challenge for astrobiology. Given the complexity of this discussion, several points must be addressed, the possible chemical reactions given the local conditions of the environment to be studied, the universality of the phenomenon of life as we know it on our planet, what we understand as the essence of the phenomenon of life, among others. The choice of biosignatures that may reveal signs of life must comply with several criteria that seek to eliminate or minimize the possibility of false positives. Here, I hope to discuss the implications of using biosignatures considering recent advances in prebiotic chemistry, as well as new conceptual frameworks for the phenomenon of life and its implications for the development of biosignatures in a non-typological way, which could open a new way to discover life structurally distinct from what we know, as well as will enable a better understanding of life as we know it on our planet.
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