Broccoli gas could reveal the presence of alien life on other planets
Scientists believe that broccoli could be used to find evidence of life on other planets because of the gas it releases.
Green vegetables are a member of the Brassica family, which flushes out potential toxins from the body as gas. This process, known as methylation, means that many of the gases eventually reach the atmosphere - and if it is happening on a planet other than Earth, scientists will be able to detect it.
“Methylation is widespread on Earth, and we would expect life to cause it elsewhere—most cells have mechanisms to expel harmful substances,” said Michaela Leung, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Riverside.
One methyl gas, methyl bromide, has several advantages over other gases traditionally targeted in the search for life outside our solar system. Because the gas stays in the atmosphere for a shorter time than others, detecting it means something made it recently.
Ms Leung said: 'If you find it, the odds are high it was made not so long ago - and that whoever made it is still making it.
Methyl bromide is also more likely to have been produced by a living organism than a gas such as methane, which can be produced by microscopic life but can also be generated by volcanoes or other geological processes. "There are limited ways to produce this gas through non-biological means, so its presence is more indicative of life," Ms. Leung added.
It is worth noting that while methyl bromide is an extremely common gas on Earth, it is not easily detectable in our atmosphere because the sun's ultraviolet rays break it down. However, other stars, such as smaller and cooler M dwarf stars, would produce less radiation, and thus would not break up the gas in the atmospheres of the surrounding planets and would be easier to detect on them.
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