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Time to consider search strategies for complex life on exoplanets

Upcoming telescopes might be able to detect signatures of complex life on other worlds, but we need to involve physical, chemical and life scientists at the planning stage in order to interpret the findings when the time comes.

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Fig. 1: False-colour image of Earth at a wavelength of 450–1,100 nm.

NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

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Acknowledgements

Dirk Schulze-Makuch acknowledges support from ERC Advanced Grant ‘HOME’ (No. 339 231).

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Schulze-Makuch, D., Bains, W. Time to consider search strategies for complex life on exoplanets. Nat Astron 2, 432–433 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-018-0476-2

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