Quantifying The Information Impact Of Future Searches For Exoplanetary Biosignatures – Astrobiology News

One of the major goals for astronomy in the next decades is the remote search for biosignatures (i.e.\ the spectroscopic evidence of biological activity) in exoplanets.
Here, we adopt a Bayesian statistical framework to discuss the implications of such future searches, both in the case when life is detected, and when no definite evidence is found. We show that even a single detection of biosignatures in the vicinity of our stellar system, in a survey of similar size to what will be obtainable …

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