During the pandemic summer of 2020 in Concord, Mass., 17-year-old Max Seager began testing how everyday materials fared against sulfuric acid, setting off a series of experiments and studies regarding alien biology.
His mother, planetary scientist Sara Seager, was then a professor at M.I.T. and was considering designing a probe to send to Venus. She asked her son to check which metals and ceramics could survive the planet’s thick, corrosive clouds of sulfuric acid.
Max wanted to see the chemical reaction firsthand. Restricted to 30-milliliter bottles, he purchased dozens, donned protective gear, and placed an ant in a ceramic dish of the acid.
“The poor ant kind of just liquefied,” Max said. Next, he dropped in a rhododendron leaf, which survived completely intact due to its waxy coating.
That single surviving leaf sparked a multi-year investigation into whether life could thrive in environments completely alien to Earth. For decades, astronomers maintained that carbon was the sole viable building block for complex biomolecules, and water the only suitable liquid to facilitate their reactions.
“I am, reluctantly, a self-confessed carbon chauvinist,” the astronomer Carl Sagan wrote in “Cosmos” in 1980. “I am also a water chauvinist,” Dr. Sagan added, noting he could find no other liquid capable of supporting organic chemistry.
Modern exoplanet detection relies on this assumption. Telescopes hunt for watery worlds orbiting within stellar habitable zones.
However, recent studies by the Seagers and their collaborators indicate that sulfuric acid is an overlooked, stable cosmic solvent. “Maybe we should also be looking for sulfuric acid,” Max said.
Following high school, Max left home to study chemistry at Worcester Polytechnic Institute while continuing experiments with his mother on weekends. Dr. Seager acquired an old spectrometer for their living room to probe molecular structures before moving the research into university laboratories.
In 2023, the research team reported that the genetic building blocks of DNA—adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine—remained intact in sulfuric acid. While the sugar-phosphate backbone of earthly DNA disintegrates in the acid, the team subsequently demonstrated that peptide chains of amino acids serve as a stable alternative backbone.
By September, researchers confirmed that these peptides folded into stable three-dimensional structures required for biological function. “The stability of organic molecules in sulfuric acid is a rule, not an exception,” said Janusz Petkowski, a collaborator based at Wrocław University of Science and Technology in Poland.
While water remains the primary target for astrobiologists due to the relative ease of detecting water vapor in starlight, alternative solvents are gaining traction. “It’s worthwhile to look at alternative solvents,” said Vikki Meadows, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington and the NASA-funded Virtual Planetary Laboratory.
Dr. Meadows remains focused on currently detectable atmospheric signatures, maintaining her stance with Team Water. Conversely, Dr. Seager, who recently moved from M.I.T. to the University of Toronto, hopes to find acid-based microbial life closer to home within the cooler clouds of Venus.
To gather direct data, Dr. Seager is planning Venus missions in partnership with space company Rocket Lab. Max has since transitioned from astrobiology to study brain cancer in graduate school at the University of Calgary, leaving the ongoing search for acid-based life to his mother and her collaborators.
