Aliens could be found in dust, scientists say

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. And a new paper suggests that humanity could one day study that dust for those same signs of life – or may even be able to now. “I propose we study well-preserved grains ejected from other worlds for potential signs of life,” said the University of Tokyo’s Tomonori Totani, author of the new paper. However, if there are signs of life in dust grains, not only could we be certain, but we could also find out soon.” Bigger pieces of material that are thrown into space usually fall back down into their planet, or join new permanent orbits around a planet, and much smaller ones are probably too small to include useful signs of life. Given there are many unknowns involved, this estimate could be too high or too low, but the means to explore it already exist so it seems like a worthwhile pursuit.” A paper describing the work, ‘Solid grains ejected from terrestrial exoplanets as a probe of the abundance of life in the Milky Way’, is published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.