Perhaps even now, above a far distant planet, the smallest of possible collisions will be happening — one molecule of a gas hitting another. But in this tiniest of acts, spread across a whole atmosphere, could come the answer to the biggest of questions: is there life out there? Scientists have shown that the jostling of distant oxygen molecules is, theoretically, visible from Earth. In doing so, they believe they could be opening the way to the next stage in the search for alien life. The work involves looking at the tiniest perturbations in the light coming from distant stars.

Source: The Times January 07, 2020 00:08 UTC