Expectations and Limitations in the Search for Life: Toward a Coherent Framework for Life Detection
Expectations and Limitations in the Search for Life: Toward a Coherent Framework for Life Detection
Session ID#: 282993
Session Description:
The Louisiana State University-led AGU-2025 Townhall on expectations and limitations in the search for life formulated key community questions across geology, biology, engineering and policy. We seek to advance and consolidate these findings in the context of those proposed by the KISS Institute’s Biology of Biosignature Detection Workshop, DARES Task Force 2, SFL-SAG, NAS-NASA Science Strategy for the Human Exploration of Mars, and COSPAR’s Panel on Planetary Protection. Accordingly, we welcome analog field, laboratory, and computational findings that constrain key goals in life detection. Establishing least common denominators of life's limits across the Solar and exoplanetary systems, including energetic, abiotic, and geologic thresholds, is crucial to advancing new work motivated by Drake's Equation. Additionally, research characterizing interstellar objects traversing our solar system is of great interest to reveal habitability constraints that are otherwise technologically inaccessible (even in the age of observatories like James Webb). All such works are welcome.
Co-Sponsor(s):
- B - Biogeosciences
- EP - Earth and Planetary Surface Processes
- SY - Science and Society
Index Terms:
0406 Astrobiology and extraterrestrial materials [BIOGEOSCIENCES]
1011 Thermodynamics [GEOCHEMISTRY]
1094 Instruments and techniques [GEOCHEMISTRY]
5220 Hydrothermal systems and weathering on other planets [PLANETARY SCIENCES: ASTROBIOLOGY]
Primary Convener: Devan Nisson, Astrobiology Postdoctoral Program Fellow, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, United States
Conveners: Suniti Karunatillake, Louisiana State University, Geology and Geophysics, Baton Rouge, United States and Lynn Rothschild, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, United States
Student/Early Career Convener: Carlos Gary-Bicas, Louisiana State University, Geology and Geophysics, Baton Rouge, United States
See more of: Planetary Sciences