Astrobiologists believe that the presence of laughing gas in the atmosphere of a distant planet could indicate the presence of life, which is gaseous nitrous oxide from a greenhouse gas emitted by plants, making it a biological signature, or atmospheric compound produced by an organism. .
According to the British newspaper “Daily Mail”, biomarkers usually include abundant gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, where oxygen, which is produced by photosynthesis, and methane, which is produced by the decomposition of organic matter, have been described as the most promising biological signatures for life. . outer planetsor planets outside the solar system.
But astrobiologists at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) believe the gas has been largely ignored by the scientific community as an indicator of life. Seriously think about nitrous oxide, but we think it might be wrong.”
Nitrous oxide is used as a pain reliever, usually associated with the dentist’s office, and is also abused as a poisonous gas.
The team led by Dr. Schwittermann came to his conclusion after calculating how much nitrous oxide could be produced by organisms on an Earth-like planet, and then devised models that simulated a second planet around different stars, which showed a lot of laughter. Gas can be detected on these rocky, Earth-like exoplanets by observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope.
Their findings were also published in The Astrophysical Journal.