Community Report from the Biosignatures Standards of Evidence Workshop
Abstract
The search for life beyond the Earth is the overarching goal of the NASA Astrobiology Program, and it underpins the science of missions that explore the environments of Solar System planets and exoplanets. However, the detection of extraterrestrial life, in our Solar System and beyond, is sufficiently challenging that it is likely that multiple measurements and approaches, spanning disciplines and missions, will be needed to make a convincing claim. Life detection will therefore not be an instantaneous process, and it is unlikely to be unambiguous-yet it is a high-stakes scientific achievement that will garner an enormous amount of public interest. Current and upcoming research efforts and missions aimed at detecting past and extant life could be supported by a consensus framework to plan for, assess and discuss life detection claims (c.f. Green et al., 2021). Such a framework could help increase the robustness of biosignature detection and interpretation, and improve communication with the scientific community and the public. In response to this need, and the call to the community to develop a confidence scale for standards of evidence for biosignature detection (Green et al., 2021), a community-organized workshop was held on July 19-22, 2021. The meeting was designed in a fully virtual (flipped) format. Preparatory materials including readings, instructional videos and activities were made available prior to the workshop, allowing the workshop schedule to be fully dedicated to active community discussion and prompted writing sessions. To maximize global interaction, the discussion components of the workshop were held during business hours in three different time zones, Asia/Pacific, European and US, with daily information hand-off between group organizers.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2210.14293,
title = {Community Report from the Biosignatures Standards of Evidence Workshop},
author = {Victoria Meadows and Heather Graham and Victor Abrahamsson and Zach Adam and Elena Amador-French and Giada Arney and Laurie Barge and Erica Barlow and Anamaria Berea and Maitrayee Bose and Dina Bower and Marjorie Chan and Jim Cleaves and Andrea Corpolongo and Miles Currie and Shawn Domagal-Goldman and Chuanfei Dong and Jennifer Eigenbrode and Allison Enright and Thomas J. Fauchez and Martin Fisk and Matthew Fricke and Yuka Fujii and Andrew Gangidine and Eftal Gezer and Daniel Glavin and Lee Grenfell and Sonny Harman and Roland Hatzenpichler and Libby Hausrath and Bryana Henderson and Sarah Stewart Johnson and Andrea Jones and Trinity Hamilton and Keyron Hickman-Lewis and Linda Jahnke and Betul Kacar and Ravi Kopparapu and Christopher Kempes and Adrienne Kish and Joshua Krissansen-Totton and Wil Leavitt and Yu Komatsu and Tim Lichtenberg and Melody Lindsay and Catherine Maggiori and David Des Marais and Cole Mathis and Yuki Morono and Marc Neveu and Grace Ni and Conor Nixon and Stephanie Olson and Niki Parenteau and Scott Perl and Richard Quinn and Chinmayee Raj and Laura Rodriguez and Lindsay Rutter and McCullen Sandora and Britney Schmidt and Eddie Schwieterman and Antigona Segura and Fatih Sekerci and Lauren Seyler and Harrison Smith and Georgia Soares and Sanjoy Som and Shino Suzuki and Bonnie Teece and Jessica Weber and Felisa Wolfe-Simon and Michael Wong and Hajime Yano and Liza Young},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.14293},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
86 pages, 14 figures, workshop report