Astrobiology

Aliens Don’t Want To Eat Us, Says Former SETI Director

May 24, 2012

Alien life probably isn’t interested in having us for dinner, enslaving us or laying eggs in our bellies, according to a recent statement by former SETI director Jill Tarter. (Of course, Hollywood would rather have us think otherwise.)

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Is Earth Alive? Scientists Seek Sulfur For An Answer

May 16, 2012

Researchers at the University of Maryland have discovered a way to identify and track sulfuric compounds in Earth’s marine environment, opening a path to either refute or support a decades-old hypothesis that our planet can be compared to a singular, self-regulating, living organism — a.k.a. the Gaia theory.

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Rogue Planets Could Drive By And Scoop Up Life

May 10, 2012

Free-floating “rogue” planets may occasionally dip into the inner Solar System, picking up dust containing organic compounds — a.k.a. the ingredients for life — and carry it back out into the galaxy, according to new research by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Director of the University of Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology in the UK.

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Alien Life May Not Be So Alien – If It Exists At All

May 9, 2012

Are we too hopeful in our hunt for extraterrestrial life? Regardless of exoplanet counts, super-Earths and Goldilocks zones, the probability of life elsewhere in the Universe is still a moot point — to date, we still only know of one instance of it. But even if life does exist somehow, somewhere besides Earth, would it [...]

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We Really Hope ET is Out There, But There’s Not Enough Scientific Evidence, Researchers Say

April 26, 2012

For many of us who grew up listening to Carl Sagan, watching robotic spacecraft travel to other worlds, and indulging in science fiction books and movies, it’s a given: one day we’ll find life somewhere else in the solar system or Universe. But are we being too optimistic? Two researchers say that our hopes and [...]

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Intelligent Alien Dinosaurs?

April 13, 2012

I for one welcome our alien dinosaur overlords…maybe. Dinosaurs once roamed and ruled the Earth. Is it possible that similar humongous creatures may have evolved on another planet – a world that DIDN’T get smacked by an asteroid – and later they developed to have human-like, intelligent brains? A recent paper discussing why the biochemical [...]

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Is This Proof of Life on Mars?

April 12, 2012

The Curiosity rover is currently on its way to Mars, scheduled to make a dramatic landing within Gale Crater in mid-August and begin its hunt for the geologic signatures of a watery, life-friendly past. Solid evidence that large volumes of water existed on Mars at some point would be a major step forward in the [...]

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How Would Humans Respond to First Contact from an Alien World?

April 5, 2012

According to Star Trek lore, it is only 51 years until humans encounter their first contact with an alien species. In the movie “Star Trek: First Contact,” on April 5, 2063, Vulcans pay a visit to an Earth recovering from a war-torn period (see the movie clip below.) But will such a planet-wide, history-changing event [...]

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Could There Be Life In Them Thar Pits?

April 5, 2012

Recent images from ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft reveal long rows of crater-like depressions lining the flanks of ancient Martian volcanoes located in the planet’s vast Tharsis region. Rather than being the result of impact events, these “pit chains” were likely caused by underground lava flows — and could be a prime location for look for [...]

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“Tidal Venuses” May Have Been Wrung Out To Dry

March 28, 2012

Earth-sized exoplanets within a distant star’s habitable zone could still be very much uninhabitable, depending on potential tidal stresses — either past or present — that could have “squeezed out” all the water, leaving behind a bone-dry ball of rock.

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New Analysis of Clay Deposits in Ancient Martian Lakes

March 15, 2012

Mars was once a much wetter world than it is now, with hot springs, rivers, lakes and perhaps even oceans. Just how wet exactly, and for how long, is still a subject of considerable debate. One vital clue comes from clay mineral deposits and sediments left over after the water disappeared, but still visible now. [...]

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Life Will Always Find a Way… To Eat Everything

March 12, 2012

A couple of consumption stories crossed my desk today, so I thought I’d merge them together. The bottom line is that everything’s on the menu. If there’s energy to be extracted from something, life is going to find a way to consume it. We’ve got a deep sea worm that seems to be able to [...]

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Is There Life on Earth?

March 2, 2012

It may seem like a silly question — of course there’s life on Earth — but what if we didn’t know that? What if we were looking at Earth from another vantage point, from another planet in another star system, perhaps? Would we be able to discern then if Earth were in fact teeming with [...]

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Exciting New ‘Enceladus Explorer’ Mission Proposed to Search for Life

February 29, 2012

Along with Jupiter’s moon Europa, a tiny Saturnian moon, Enceladus, has become one of the most fascinating places in the solar system and a prime target in the search for extraterrestrial life. Its outward appearance is that of a small, frozen orb, but it revealed some surprises when the Cassini spacecraft gave us our first [...]

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Life in the Universe, Reflected by the Moon

February 29, 2012

Earthshine – a poetic, fanciful word for the soft, faint glow on the Moon when the light from the Sun is reflected from the Earth’s surface, onto the dark part of the Moon. And as unlikely as it might seem, astronomers have used Earthshine to verify there’s life in the Universe: Us. While we already [...]

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Salty Soil on Mars Could Be Slurping Water from the Atmosphere

February 28, 2012

It happens every summer in humid air: the salt in your salt shaker clumps together as the salt draws in the water from the air. Researchers have found this happens even in the frigid but dry McMurdo Dry Valley in Antarctica, a cold, polar desert. The sandy, salty soils there are frequently dotted with moist [...]

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Tidal Heating on Some Exoplanets May Leave Them Waterless

February 10, 2012

As the number of exoplanets being discovered continues to increase dramatically, a growing number are now being found which orbit within their stars’ habitable zones. For smaller, rocky worlds, this makes it more likely that some of them could harbour life of some kind, as this is the region where temperatures (albeit depending on other [...]

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Do Alien Civilizations Inevitably ‘Go Green’?

February 8, 2012

In the famous words of Arthur C. Clarke, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This phrase is often quoted to express the idea that an alien civilization which may be thousands or millions of years older than us would have technology so far ahead of ours that to us it would appear to [...]

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600 Million Year Drought Makes Life on Surface of Mars Unlikely

February 6, 2012

Mars is often referred to as a desert world, and for good reason – its surface is barren, dry and cold. While water was abundant in the distant past, it has long since disappeared from the surface, although ice, snow, frost and fog are still common. Other than liquid brines possibly trickling at times, all [...]

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New Study Shows How Trace Elements Affect Stars’ Habitable Zones

February 4, 2012

Habitable zones are the regions around stars, including our own Sun, where conditions are the most favourable for the development of life on any rocky planets that happen to orbit within them. Generally, they are regions where temperatures allow for liquid water to exist on the surface of these planets and are ideal for “life [...]

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