Space Exploration: Scientists Suggest Nitrous Oxide Could Be Found Outside Earth, a Sign of Extraterrestrial Life

The University of California Riverside scientists suggested in a recently published paper that space could be filled with a compound, which a number of young people use for a rapid high like nitrous oxide.

It could be a new indicator as well, though, for whether or not a particular planet is habitable. As specified in a Futurism report, scientists believe that "there could well be a nutritious oxide," more popularly known as "whippets or laughing gas," somewhere in space.

For real.https://t.co/upazUEogqK
— Futurism (@futurism) October 9, 2022

According to Eddie Schwieterman, a UCR astrobiologist, fewer scientists have seriously considered nitrous oxide, although they think it may be a mistake.

Schwieterman, together with his team at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences of the UCR, computed how regularly living organisms were able to produce nitrous oxide and then entered the data into a planetary model.

Then, they determined that habitable exoplanets that have nitrous oxide atmospheres could be detected by technology like the James Webb Space Telescope.

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(Photo : Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
In this photo illustration some of the thousands of empty canisters of nitrous oxide that were collected at the end of a music festival are seen on October 14, 2015, in Bristol, England.

Nitrous Oxide as Biosignature

While certain non-biological situations create nitrous oxide, like the small amount emitted by lightning strikes, the UCR researchers accounted for that probability in its modeling.

Based on this model used in the study published in the Astrophysics Journal, they noted that lightning releases nitrogen dioxide as well, which could be identified in small levels and used to rule out a planet.

Other researchers who have considered nitrous oxide as a biosignature said that the compound does not exist in large amounts in the atmosphere of Earth despite the billions upon billions of forms of life that live there, per the UCR press release.

Schwieterman's team has an answer for that as well. Such a conclusion does not count for periods in the history of Earth where ocean conditions would have allowed for much greater nitrous oxide release. Conditions in those periods, the astrobiologist explained, might mirror where an exoplanet exists at present.

With the JWST that offers the greatest data-collecting capabilities for space to date, the research team is hoping their fellow scientist will start taking the nitrous oxide-as-biosignature hypothesis seriously. And perhaps, like a lot of drug enthusiasts before them, they broaden their horizons.

Other Nitrogen Compounds Transformed into N2O

In the UCR release, Schwieterman explained that, in a star system like TRAPPIST-1, it is the nearest, not to mention the best system to observe the atmospheres of rocky planets, one could possibly detect nitrous oxide "at levels comparable to CO2 or methane."

There are several ways that living things can produce N2O. Microorganisms constantly transform other nitrogen compounds into N2O, a metabolic process that can yield helpful cellular energy.

The astrobiologist also said that life generates nitrogen waste products that some microorganisms convert into nitrates.

In a fish tank, such nitrates are building up, which is the reason there's a need to change the water. Nonetheless, under the right conditions in the ocean, certain bacteria can convert such nitrates into N2O, Schwieterman explained, adding that the gas then leaks into the atmosphere.

Related information about nitrous oxide is shown on Anjunabeats' YouTube video below: