Professor Lewis Dartnell, Professor of Science Communication, has written an article for BBC Sky at Night Magazine about seeking signs of alien life.

Lewis Dartnell

In his regular article for the magazine’s ‘Cutting Edge’ section, Professor Dartnell has written about how next generation telescopes could help astronomers find distant signs of life, known as biosignatures.

Professor Dartnell wrote: “We are able to physically explore the Solar System close-up with robotic probes, but even places like Mars or the moon Europa seem inhospitable compared to Earth. On the other hand, there are an enormous number of habitable planets across the Galaxy, but we can only observe them remotely. The signs of life, or biosignatures, on an exoplanet would have to be globally conspicuous to be detectable. 

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