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Main Author: Sambey, Stanley Everett
Format: Recurso digital
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Published: Zenodo 2026
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19212305
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author Sambey, Stanley Everett
author_facet Sambey, Stanley Everett
contents <p>The detection of extraterrestrial life is fundamentally limited not only by biological abun-<br>dance but by the persistence of measurable biosignatures under environmental constraints. Ox-<br>idizing environments, such as the perchlorate-rich regolith of Mars, simultaneously degrade<br>organic molecules and suppress instrumental recovery of biological signals. We present a mini-<br>mal dynamical model in which biosignature detectability is governed by a competition between<br>biological production, environmental oxidant-driven destruction, and measurement-induced loss.<br>The framework formalizes a regime in which life may persist while remaining observationally<br>inaccessible, providing a quantitative basis for false negatives in planetary life detection. The<br>model predicts a systematic shift in detectable biosignature classes toward oxidation-resistant<br>channels and is shown to be consistent with historical Mars observations.</p>
format Recurso digital
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institution Zenodo
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publishDate 2026
publisher Zenodo
record_format zenodo
spellingShingle Oxidative Constraint Suppression of Biosignature Detectability A Minimal Model for False Negatives in Planetary Life Detection
Sambey, Stanley Everett
<p>The detection of extraterrestrial life is fundamentally limited not only by biological abun-<br>dance but by the persistence of measurable biosignatures under environmental constraints. Ox-<br>idizing environments, such as the perchlorate-rich regolith of Mars, simultaneously degrade<br>organic molecules and suppress instrumental recovery of biological signals. We present a mini-<br>mal dynamical model in which biosignature detectability is governed by a competition between<br>biological production, environmental oxidant-driven destruction, and measurement-induced loss.<br>The framework formalizes a regime in which life may persist while remaining observationally<br>inaccessible, providing a quantitative basis for false negatives in planetary life detection. The<br>model predicts a systematic shift in detectable biosignature classes toward oxidation-resistant<br>channels and is shown to be consistent with historical Mars observations.</p>
title Oxidative Constraint Suppression of Biosignature Detectability A Minimal Model for False Negatives in Planetary Life Detection
url https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19212305