Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2020

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2020 on Earth about its production. Such an inter- pretation is another example of the princi- ple of mediocrity, a topic of the July-August 2020 issue. If phosphine is produced on Earth by life and we’ve no other mechanism for its production in significant quantities, we can − at our potential peril and misunderstand- ing − attribute its presence elsewhere to sim- ilar biological processes. This detection adds a piece of hard data to a debate that, for much of our history, has been driven merely by our knowledge of other planets. The ability to apply hard sci- ence to the exobiology question was founded largely on scientific developments at the end of WWII and the political race to prove the superiority of political ideolo- gies during the Cold War – radar tech- nology, detectors across the electro- magnetic spec- trum, satellites, and interplanetary propulsion. This is why the appear- ance of more data- driven speculation in the scientific lit- erature, as well as more focus about life far less techno- logically advanced than our own, only began start- ing in the 1960’s. A relevant paper was published in Science by Carl A bove, the At- acama Large Millimeter/sub- millimeter Array, high in northern Chile. [W. Gar- nier, ALMA/ESO/ NAOJ/NRAO] Below, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawaii. [William Montgomerie]