Finding life in the outer solar system by pitlamping

Physicist Freeman Dyson suggests that we start looking for life on the moons of Jupiter and out past Neptune, in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. He talks about what such life would be like — and how we might find it.

On the topic of Europa, Freeman believes we could find life there except for the expenses. It would be to hard to burrow through the ice and find out if there are things swimming around down there. He believes that if there is life down there that it would eventually move to the surface. The surface is a vacuum. There is no atmosphere, but being aquatic on that moon this would not be a problem for them. Freeman noted that this is not all likely, but possible and his philosophy is “look for whats detectable not for whats probable.”

Freeman also mentions a way of finding life in these systems. There is a term called pit-lamping that refers to using a spotlight at night to kill an animal. The light is reflected by the lenses in the animals eyes and they shoot it. Mr. Dyson believes this technique of hunting can be used to hunt for life in space. He believes that if life lives further away from the sun the reflectors in its eyes must be more powerful making it even easier to see than on earth.

Now in the Kuiper belt he believes there will be widespread life. The plants will be broken up and grown together in huge fields in space. Since the gravity is low they will be extremely wide spread. He says that even if we don’t find these things and they don’t exist at all, we can put them there and basically create our own masterpiece on the canvas of the universe.

If we don’t find them is to make them ourselves. Design life to live on Europa and in the outer solar system.

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