What processes other than water and energy could be responsible for creating life on other worlds? This is what a recent study published in the International Journal of Astrobiology hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated how cosmic radiation could play a role in creating life on worlds outside Earth. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the conditions for finding life beyond Earth, even life as we don’t know it.
For the study, the researchers used computer models to simulate whether life could form and evolve from cosmic radiation using a concept called the Radiolytic Habitable Zone (RHZ), on worlds like Mars, Europa, and Enceladus. The researchers simulated how deep cosmic radiation could penetrate, which makes this intriguing for worlds with subsurface oceans like Europa and Enceladus, and potential subsurface reservoirs of liquid water like Mars. In the end, the researchers estimated the appropriate depths on these worlds where the RHZ could host life.
“This discovery changes the way we think about where life might exist,” said Dr. Dimitra Atri, who is the Group Leader of the Mars Research Group at New York University Abu Dhabi's Center for Astrophysics and Space Science and lead author of the study. “Instead of looking only for warm planets with sunlight, we can now consider places that are cold and dark, as long as they have some water beneath the surface and are exposed to cosmic rays. Life might be able to survive in more places than we ever imagined.”
This study comes as the search for life beyond Earth continues to ramp up, with two NASA rovers on Mars, NASA’s Europa Clipper is en route to the small moon, and NASA is gearing up to send its Dragonfly quadcopter to Titan in the near future.
What new discoveries regarding cosmic radiation and life will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: International Journal of Astrobiology, EurekAlert!
Featured Image: Mars (Credit: Dimitra Atri, EMM/EXI/NYUAD/CASS)
