Proposed signs of life on other worlds are known as “biosignatures”. This is defined as “an object, substance, and/or pattern whose origin specifically requires a biological agent”. In other words, any detection requires all possible abiotic production pathways to be considered.
In addition to this, scientists face many challenges in the collection, interpretation, and planetary environmental context of possible biosignature gases. Understanding the composition of a planetary atmosphere from limited data, collected from light years away, is very difficult.
We also have to understand that these are often exotic environments, with conditions we do not experience on Earth. As such, exotic chemical processes may occur here too.
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