Skip to main content

Forget the Habitable Zone – We Need to Find the Computational Zone

Astronomers are currently searching for signs of life in the “habitable zones” of nearby stars, which is defined as the band around a star where liquid water can potentially exist. But a recent paper argues that we need to take a more nuanced and careful approach, based not on the potential for life, but the potential for computation.

One way to define life itself is as a set of computations that act on information. The information is stored in DNA and the computations are performed by various proteins. The ability to store information and act on its environment allows life to undergo natural selection, which finds ever more complex arrangements.

The traditional searches for life look at how we understand it from an earthly context. Namely, creatures living on the surface of a world just the right distance from a parent star and using liquid water as a solvent for chemical reactions. But it’s easy to imagine much more complex and varied forms of life out there in the universe. Life could use other solvents. Life could be buried underground in icy outer moons. Life may not even require a star. And biological systems could give rise to technological systems that would not meet our current definition for life but might be alive in their own way.

And so a pair of researchers want to rebuild the concept of the habitable zone using a more fundamental concept of computation. They argue that the best chances of finding signs of life are where there is easiest access to computation. The researchers argue that these so-called “computational zones” require three characteristics. One, there must be the capacity for computation, which means that there is a rich set of chemistry available. Two, there must be a raw form of energy, like sunlight or hydrothermal vents. And lastly, computation requires a substrate – something in which the computation can take place.

The traditional view of habitable zones can now be seen as a subset of a much larger concept of computational zones. Where there is life as we currently understand it here on Earth there is computation taking place. But this framework allows us to develop search strategies for concepts of life extending beyond that. For example, if we study individual systems through a lens of computational ability, we might find which systems might be amenable to artificial energy gathering structures like Dyson spheres. Or we could examine how gas clouds around sub-stellar structures could meet all the conditions necessary for computation, and therefore the conditions necessary for a broadened definition of life.

The search for life in our universe in a scientific way has only just begun. And it’s important, as the authors emphasize, to keep an open mind.

The post Forget the Habitable Zone – We Need to Find the Computational Zone appeared first on Universe Today.



from Universe Today https://ift.tt/l1EZ5n7
via IFTTT

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Researchers Match Up 12 Meteorites with the Near-Earth Asteroids They Came From

Every day meteoroids blast through our planet’s atmosphere to hit the ground as meteorites. A team of researchers in Italy traced twelve of them to progenitor asteroids that orbit in near-Earth space. Scientists treasure meteorites because they reveal information about their parent bodies. In an arXiv paper, two Italian researchers—Albino Carbognani and Marco Fenucci—analyze the characteristics of the parent bodies of 20 selected meteorites. They were able to track all but eight back to their parent asteroids. Based on their work, the pair says at least a quarter of meteorites come from collisions that happened in near-Earth space and not in the Main Belt. Meteorites from Near-Earth Asteroids: How They Got Here Many meteorites are chondritic, similar to asteroids in the Main Belt (or came from it). In their paper, the authors point out that progenitor meteoroids (including many that fall to Earth and become meteorites) formed millions of years ago following collisions between main-...

JWST Takes a Detailed Look at Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede

Nature doesn’t conform to our ideas of neatly-contained categories. Many things in nature blur the lines we try to draw around them. That’s true of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System. The JWST took a closer look at Ganymede, the moon that’s kind of like a planet, to understand its surface better. Ganymede is basically a planet, except it doesn’t orbit the Sun. If it did orbit the Sun instead of Jupiter, it would be indistinguishable from a planet. It has a differentiated internal structure with a molten core that produces a magnetic field. It has a silicon mantle much like Earth’s, and has a complex icy crust with a deep ocean submerged beneath it. It has an atmosphere, though it’s thin. It’s also larger than Mercury, and almost as large as Mars. According to the authors of a new study, it’s an archetype of a water world. But even with all this knowledge of the huge moon, there are details yet to be revealed. This is especially true of its complex surface...

Could We Launch a Mission to Chase Down Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS?

It’s a tantalizing prospect. Since 2017, three interstellar objects have been spotted passing through our solar system: 1I/ʻOumuamua, 2I/Borisov… and just this month, 3I/ATLAS. Discovered on July 1st by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert Survey, 3I/ATLAS is zipping through the inner solar system in the last half of 2025. Certainly, all assets on the ground and in space will be turned towards 3I/ATLAS over the next few frenzied months, to glean what we can… but what would 3I/ATLAS look like up close? Can we even consider chasing down such a speedy visitor? from Universe Today https://ift.tt/HAho7wC via IFTTT