Eating Test

Labelled-release experiment

Lifing things should eat. Probably they like to eat carbon. Maybe they also breath out CO2 from the carbon they eat. At least, that is what we do.

Use radioactive labelling again.

The experiment:

  1. Get some regolith.
  2. Moisten it with ``soup'' containing hydrocarbon* molecules.
  3. The life forms eat the C* and breath out C*O2.
  4. Look in the gas given off for C* decays.
But maybe the regolith just contains some chemical X that reacts with hydrocarbons and gives up CO2. If you see C*O2 given off in the experiment, how can you tell if it is a sign of life or just ``chemical X?''

Result

ASTR 121 Home
Davison E. Soper, Institute of Theoretical Science, University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403 USA soper@bovine.uoregon.edu