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Detecting that a planet might barely support life is impossible to do remotely for our next door neighbor Mars, and we have rovers and orbiters sending high resolution images every day. For exoplanets, we're working with 1 pixel images. Not 1 megapixel, 1 pixel. So for now we can only look for things that would make scientists say whoa, how can that possibly happen?

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I wouldn't say the planet "barely" supported life before the oxygenation event. Otherwise we wouldn't have as much fossil evidence as we have.

I'd rephrase what you wrote with our current technical limitations make it more feasible to detect life by finding something that would make astrobiologists say woah, how can that possibly happen?

> I wouldn't say the planet "barely" supported life before the oxygenation event. Otherwise we wouldn't have as much fossil evidence as we have.

I believe you're talking about Earth, and the person you're responding to was talking about Mars. At least I don't think Mars had an oxygenation event or fossils?

Ah yes, sorry. Every now and then I need a reminder to refrain from written communications before I finish my first coffee

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