"The grandest cosmic question remains unanswered: "Are we alone?" Earth stands alone as a definitively inhabited world. Although claims of alien life abound, they lack independent support. " Canals on Mars " were merely optical illusions. The Viking mission's promising Labeled Release experiment failed replication. Microfossils in the Allen Hills Martian meteorite remain inconclusive. Phosphine's presence on Venus, hotly debated, admit volcanic origins. And extraterrestrial messages, including 1977's Wow! signal, allow natural explanations."
"The 7 Confidence of Life Detection (CoLD) steps outline how we'll get there. 1.) Detecting a biogenic signal. This part's easy; ruling out non-biological alternatives is hard. 2.) Ruling out contamination. Terrestrial life must be eliminated as the culprit. 3.) Demonstrating biological signal production in situ. Determining plausible biological pathways represents a necessary step. 4.) Ruling out non-biological sources. Like seasonal methane on Mars, chemical pathways often duplicate biogenic signatures."
Earth stands alone as a definitively inhabited world. Multiple claimed biosignatures on other worlds lack independent support. Martian "canals" were optical illusions. The Viking Labeled Release experiment produced promising results but failed replication. Microfossils in the Allen Hills meteorite remain inconclusive. Phosphine reported on Venus admits volcanic origins. The 1977 Wow! signal and other extraterrestrial messages allow natural explanations. Confirming life requires detecting biogenic signals while eliminating non-biologic alternatives. The seven Confidence of Life Detection steps require detection, contamination exclusion, in situ production demonstration, ruling out abiotic sources, independent corroboration, exhaustive hypothesis elimination, and independent follow-ups. No claim has yet reached level 4.
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