The Milky Way could be littered with bubbles of life.
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According to a new research headed by Henry Lin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), if life can travel between the stars (a process called panspermia), it would spread in a pattern that scientists could possibly detect.
For centuries, philosophers, scientists and intellectuals are wondering if we are alone in this vast universe. The thought of us being the only life within such an expansive universe can be considered arrogant, and yet, we have found no proof that the assumption is wrong.
One day, it might be possible to detect the spread of life among the stars through panspermia-a hypothetical process of life distributed throughout the Milky Way by asteroids, comets, and even spacecraft.
There are two possible methods through which their theory could spark truth.
They believe that if life began with a few planets and then later on spreads through deep space to other alien worlds, then this will reveal a pattern around the galaxy where planets that possess life, may be close to another one in spherical regions that can be separated by voids.
It is also not hard to imagine that chunks of Earth could also have blasted into space and according to computer simulations, a statistical chance suggests that Earth rocks drifted to orbits of Saturn and Jupiter, and potentially impacted some of the moons of the gas giant.
Life may have spread among the stars like an infectious virus, leaving a distinctive pattern that we can recognise, say scientists. In what the researchers referred to as an “ideal” case, the Earth would be on the edge of a “life bubble” in which all nearby inhabited worlds exist on one half of the sky while the other half is uninhabited. If these phenomena happen very quickly the bubble-like pattern could break and take new forms that are easier to observe. They go on to suggest that life might spread “from host to host in a way that resembles the outbreak of an epidemic”. The speed with which it can travel is one, not to mention the fact that stars change their positions through millions of years.
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As astronomical techniques become more advanced, a team of astrophysicists think they will be able to not only detect the signatures of alien life in exoplanetary atmospheres, but also track its relentless spread throughout the galaxy.
