We May Have Been Looking For The Wrong Thing In The Search For Life

If we want to find the necessary conditions for life on the surface of another planet, let alone life itself, we should stop hoping for carbon in its atmosphere, a new paper argues. Instead, it is an absence, or at least shortage, of atmospheric carbon that could be the sign we’re getting close.

All life on Earth depends on five elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Of these, carbon is considered particularly crucial. 

Consequently, it makes sense to be on the lookout for its presence in the atmospheres of planets we think might support life beyond the Earth….