NASA is developing a battery powered device akin to a laptop which can analyze samples for materials associated with life. NASA is calling it the new chemical laptop. This device is being developed in a bid to find concrete evidence of life outside earth. The chemical laptop will be a portable, miniature version of a laboratory that can analyze samples from other worlds to detect traces of amino acids and fatty acids, which are generally associated with living beings in general, or life in particular. If successfully made, the device could be carried inside spacecrafts with astronauts to be able to make them analyze samples from outer space and arrive at results quickly.
This chemical laptop bears a strong resemblance to the tricorder from Star Trek. The size of this laptop is much like a usual laptop, but thicker because it has to make room for the chemical analysis of the sample which takes place within. Unlike the tricorder, this chemical laptop has to ingest the sample to be able to analyze it.
Fernanda Mora, a technologist from NASA reported to Science daily, from where this news is sourced that, It is a chemical analyzer that can be reprogrammed like a laptop to perform different functions. As on a regular laptop, we have different apps for different analyses like amino acids and fatty acids.
Scientists are of the opinion that life on earth evolved to use one particular type of amino acids, classified as left – handed amino acids. They even hypothesize that life on other worlds could have evolved to use the other kind of amino acids classified as right – handed amino acids. This chemical laptop will be equipped to analyze and find traces of both the kinds along with other life – proving elements. A single analysis will therefore be able to conclude the existence or possibility of life in outer space.