@mike_malaska@deepspace.social
2026-05-23 18:07 UTC
Had a great time at #AbSciCon2026!
In particular, one conversation, or set of conversations I guess, stood out. For me, as a massive paradigm shift. Will try to formulate it.
The "battle" is the search for life. (Up until now, I had thought this was the big goal.)
But the "war" is to understand how organic chemical reaction networks are set up in different environments, and different worlds (and even in space itself.)
Which means....
#astrobiology
Replies (1)
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@mike_malaska@deepspace.social 2026-05-23 18:13
The implication of this is that the key delivery of missions is the full and complete organic inventory so that it can be compared to other organic inventory datasets from other places and other worlds. As a specific example, an astrobiology mission to Enceladus that does onboard processingusing AI and returns a "yes! We have evidence for life and ONLY send back the data that supports that may win the battle (yay!!), but lose the war (booooo!!!). You need as full a dataset as possible.