In 1990, when the Galileo spacecraft flew past Earth on its journey to Jupiter, it carried out an experiment developed by astronomer Carl Sagan to look for signs of life on Earth from Space. The spacecraft found high levels of methane and oxygen in the atmosphere, suggesting photosynthesis was occurring on Earth’s surface. Since then we have been looking for such biosignatures not only in our solar system, but also beyond it.
Based on the Drake equation — a formula proposed by astrophysicist Frank Drake to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilisations in the Milky Way — there could
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