“Even though we still struggle with finding a satisfactory definition of life, that doesn’t mean that we can’t think about ways that life might be so different, so alien, that we would also struggle with noticing its existence.” – C. Scharf (2018) “Maximum Alienness,” Scientific American.

In a recent blog post for Scientific American, Caleb Scharf discussed the difficulties in identifying life as we don’t know it; life with qualities that would make it hard for scientists to notice, much less understand.

Caleb Scharf is the Director of Astrobiology at Columbia University, and a member of the “Rocky Planet Habitability” team of NExSS (Nexus for Exoplanet System Science). NExSS is a NASA research coordination network supported in part by the NASA Astrobiology Program, and is a shared element between NASA’s Planetary Science Division (PSD) and the Astrophysics Division.

Scharf has been writing about Astrobiology in Life, Unbounded since 2011, covering a wide range of topics relevant to understanding life’s potential on Earth and beyond. Life, Unbounded is available through Scientific American at: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/.