ScienceYahooScientists simulate an Earth without life to help hunt for aliens and inhabited worlds
Scientists built a computer simulation of Earth without life to help tell apart dead rocky planets from ones that might host living things.
By modeling how a planet without life develops its atmosphere, astronomers hope to be able to better distinguish rocky planets without life from those that are inhabited.
A planetary scientist at the University of California, Riverside built a computer model simulating how a rocky planet develops without any life present.
The simulation ran from Earth's birth 4.5 billion years ago to 500 million years into the future, producing a lifeless world that still had oceans and an atmosphere.
Researchers can now plug in an exoplanet's bulk properties and better judge whether gases detected in its atmosphere are signs of life or just geology.
The model simulates 19 non-biological planetary properties, so future telescope observations of exoplanet atmospheres can be checked against it to estimate the probability of life.
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