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Non-microbial life might be plainly obvious visually. You expect it to move around, and it's probably not going to look like a landslide or the wind blowing. E
by NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Non-microbial life might be plainly obvious visually. You expect it to move around, and it's probably not going to look like a landslide or the wind blowing.
Even if it's sessile at the bottom of some ammonia ocean trench, who will look at it and think that it's just a geological feature? When we talk about it being difficult to detect, we're talking about the microscopic stuff, aren't we? Or trying to notice it from interplanetary/interstellar distances, I suppose.
- otikik 3y ago> trying to notice it from interplanetary/interstellar distances That's the difficult part. "Visually" means different things when dealing with those distances. Often what we get from a whole star system is the equivalent of a few pixels worth of light. That's literally all we have to work with. If we are lucky we might be able to detect a planet orbiting the star if it happens to partially cover the star while we are looking at it. Still, it is surprising the amount of information that astrophysics can get from such a meager amount of data.
- floxy 3y agoMaybe someday... Direct Multipixel Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravity Lens Mission https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQFqDKRAROI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQFqDKRAROI https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08421 https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08421