NASA’s Chemical Laptop searches for alien life on other planets

Scientists are working with NASA to develop a tool called the Chemical Laptop that has the ability to read a sample of matter on cosmic bodies like Jupiter and Mars, and conclude if certain signatures mean signs of alien life.

The laptop takes a liquid sample and mixes it with a dye that will stick itself to amino or fatty acids which can then be picked up by laser detection. NASA compared its tool to a Star Wars “tricorder” for discovering and detecting alien life.

“Our device is a chemical analyzer that can be reprogrammed like a laptop to perform different functions,” Fernanda Mora, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory technologist helping to develop the tool, said. “As on a regular laptop, we have different apps for different analyses like amino acids and fatty acids.”

While this laptop and concept sound ideal, there is a bit of a catch: Amino and fatty acids are both key ingredients – proteins are formed from amino acids, while fatty acids are found in cell membranes – but can also form naturally without the spark of life. This means their presence alone is not necessarily a sure sign of alien life.

And because of this, the Chemical Laptop is designed to differentiate between biologically-created versus naturally-occurring versions of the acids. Scientists found that amino acids can be either right or left-handed, but most found on Earth are left-handed, which NASA believes may be a standard that was established when life first began.

“If a test found a 50-50 mixture of left-handed and right-handed amino acids, we could conclude that the sample was probably not of biological origin,” Jessica Creamer, a NASA postdoctoral fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said. “But if we were to find an excess of either left or right, that would be the golden ticket. That would be the best evidence so far that life exists on other planets.”

As the device relies on liquid samples, it may be beneficial on Europa, Jupiter’s moon. Scientists have long-believed it could harbor microbial life and with the use of this laptop, the melted ice located there may be able to be ran through the system.

The Chemical Laptop will be tested in Pasadena, California at their Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and if all goes well, we could be on our way to discovering life on other planets.

Source: Mashable