Astrobiologistsplan to use a device to reveal space microbes using human blood to prove that life does indeed exist on Earth by using a special amino acid
Boffins plan to set a vampire trap to lure out aliens hiding on Mars using a chemical in human blood.
Astrobiologists are developing a device they hope will tease dormant extraterrestrial microbes into revealing themselves. Its key ingredient is a common amino acid found in abundance inside human blood.
NASA investigators have discovered the chemical – L-serine – and similar amino acids buried within meteorites. They are vital to many organisms’ ability to synthesise their own proteins.
Tests have shown bacteria that survive in Earth’s harshest conditions are drawn towards L-serine. Boffins have created a machine containing the chemical which could land on Mars and lure out ET microbes – finally proving life exists on the Red Planet.
Max Riekeles, a former aerospace engineer who now works on extraterrestrial biosignature research at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, said: “It could be a simple way to look for life on future Mars missions. L-serine, this particular amino acid that we used, we can build it in our bodies ourselves.”
The compound is also common across Earth’s oceans in the dark, other-worldly ecosystems that surround deep sea hydrothermal vents where life evolved far away from anywhere it could feed itself via photosynthesis.
Riekeles’s device relies on a phenomena called chemotaxis – a process in which microbes migrate in response to nearby chemicals. Research has shown many tiny organisms move towards higher L-serine concentrations.
That led to Riekeles developing a test kit with two chambers divided by a thin semi-porous membrane.
The first chamber would contain a sample from another world – such as Mars – while the second would hold a concentration of L-serine in water.
Boffins hope to capture alien microbes moving towards the L-serine on video. Riekeles said: “Advances in hardware and software the last few years really bring up the really old fashioned way of doing experiments with visual observations especially when you combine it with big data, machine learning and so on.”
According to a study published in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, Riekeles and his team tested out the system using three extremophile species capable of thriving in Earth’s harshest conditions.
Each was selected to represent the kinds of tiny alien lifeforms that might survive on an inhospitable outer space world like Mars’ cosmic ray-blasted desert surface or Jupiter’s icy moons.
One bacteria found in oceans off Antarctica thrived in `really cold temperatures’ and `salty environments’ like those on Mars, said Riekeles. Another – a form of gut bacteria – develops a protective shell to endure temperatures of up to 100C.
While a third – found in the Dead Sea – can withstand aggressive radiation exposures similar those Martian microbes would need to handle.
All three in the study moved from the sample chamber towards the L-serine at speed. Professor of planetary habitability Dirk Schulze-Makuch, who worked with Riekeles, said the device could find alien microbes if a space landing craft could touch down in a spot where ‘liquid water’ existed.
He said the southern highlands of Mars or low-altitude spots like the floor of the Valles Marineris canyon or inside caves where “atmospheric pressures are sufficient to support liquid water” were favourite spots for the alien hunt.