Do you need a laptop? Well, forget about the MacBook and fix your gazes on the the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) portable life-form-signature detector, the Chemical Laptop.
The Chemical Laptop is currently being developed at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which samples for materials associated with life. Researchers hope to one day send it to other planetary bodies in the Solar System, such as that of Mars and Europa, one of Jupiter's moons.
"If this instrument were to be sent to space, it would be the most sensitive device of its kind to leave Earth, and the first to be able to look for both amino acids and fatty acids," says Jessica Creamer, a postdoctoral fellow from JPL.
NASA compares the contraption to a tricoder in "Star Trek." However, unlike the sensor-scanning hand-held device that was popularized by the TV series, the Chemical Laptop is a miniaturized on-the-go laboratory that needs to ingest samples in order to analyze them. But while it looks like a laptop, it's actually quite thicker for it needs to make space for the chemicals needed for analyses.
"Our device is a chemical analyzer that can be reprogrammed like a laptop to perform different functions," elaborates Fernanda Mora, a JPL technologist who is part of the development team for the instrument. "As on a regular laptop, we have different apps for different analyses like amino acids and fatty acids."
NASA explains that just like humans have two hands, there are two types of amino acids: left-handed and right-handed. Samples that are not of biological origins will also always register a 50-50 mixture between the two types of amino acids. However, if a sample registers something that is severely skewed toward either of the two types, such as life forms on Earth that use left-handed amino acids, then it would be a sign of life.
"If we were to find an excess of either left or right, that would be the golden ticket. That would be the best evidence so far that life exists on other planets," Creamer explains.
Note that the Chemical Laptop requires liquid samples. To facilitate the analysis of solid samples, the contraption incorporated an "espresso machine" technology, which will boil it with pressurized water at 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahreinheit). The water produced will have the organic molecules from the sample and thus, can be tested.
"One ultimate goal is to put a detector like this on a spacecraft such as a Mars rover, so for our first test outside the lab we literally did that," says Peter Willis, the project's principal investigator.
The Chemical Laptop was tested last year in JPL's Mars yard. The technology is also cited for environmental monitoring as a viable instrument that will analyze samples on the field without the need to bring them back to a laboratory.
