Extreme Life | Universe Today

This artist's conception shows the newly discovered super-Earth GJ 1214b, which orbits a red dwarf star 40 light-years from our Earth. Credit: Credit: David A. Aguilar, CfA

More exoplanets this week! Today astronomers announced the discovery of so called super-Earth around a nearby, low-mass star, GJ1214. The newly discovered planet has a mass about six times that of Earth and 2.7 times its radius, falling in between the size of Earth and the ice giants of the Solar System, Uranus and Neptune. But this latest exoplanet, GJ1214b, has something else, too: an atmosphere about 200 km thick. "This atmosphere is much thicker than that of the Earth, so the high pressure and absence of light would rule out life as we know it," said David Charbonneau, lead author of a paper in Nature reporting the discovery, "but these conditions are still very interesting, as they could allow for some complex chemistry to take place."
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Multiple missions have been sent to Mars with the hopes of testing the surface of the planet for life – or the conditions that could create life – on the Red Planet. The question of whether life in the form of bacteria (or something even more exotic!) exists on Mars is hotly debated, and still requires a resolute yes or no. Experiments done right here on Earth that simulate the conditions on Mars and their effects on terrestrial bacteria show that it is entirely possible for certain strains of bacteria to weather the harsh environment of Mars. Read more…

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We've been following former astronaut Scott Parazynski's attempt to climb Mt. Everest, and now comes the news that he has successfully reached the summit, one year after a back injury forced him to give up his climb. "It was a wonderful experience, though and through," Parazynski said in a Skype interview with Miles O'Brien, "and certainly the most challenging thing I've ever done in my life, both physically and mentally." Parazynski brought several objects with him to the world's highest summit, including rocks from the Moon, and remembrances of fallen astronauts. Parazynski is the first astronaut to summit Mt. Everest.
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A team of atmospheric chemists has moved closer to what's considered the "holy grail" of climate change science: the first-ever direct detections of biological particles within ice clouds. Ice in Clouds Experiment – Layer Clouds (ICE-L) team mounted a mass spectrometer onto a C-130 aircraft and made a series of high-speed flights through a type of cloud known as a wave cloud. Analysis of the ice crystals revealed that the particles that started their growth were made up almost entirely of either dust or biological material such as bacteria, fungal spores and plant material. While it has long been known that microorganisms become airborne and travel great distances, this study is the first to yield direct data on how they work to influence cloud formation.
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Looking for signals from distant civilizations might be an effort in futility, according to scientists who met at Harvard University recently. The dominant view of astronomers at a symposium on the future of human life in the Universe seems to be that if other life is out there, it likely is dominated by microbes or other nonspeaking creatures.
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Panspermia is a hypothesis that suggests life isn't an Earth-only affair. The seeds of life may have spread throughout the Solar System and beyond via chunks of rock or comets, encountering planetary bodies, transporting spores or bacteria to other worlds. In short, we could be living in a cosmic ecosystem linked through simple interplanetary vagabond bacteria.

However, panspermia remains in the realms of speculation as we haven't found any examples of extraterrestrial life (so far), let alone the possibility that life may be roaming freely through the vacuum of space. But panspermia as a life-spreading mechanism remains a possibility.

Now, famous physicist and futurist Freeman Dyson has come forward with an idea about what we should be looking for during the search for extraterrestrial life. Dyson believes the search for ET is flawed, as we are looking for what we deem to be probable lifeforms; perhaps we should be looking for detectable lifeforms.

And what's one of the most detectable forms of life we know of? Flowers. What's more, these flowers may have spread as far afield as the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud…
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Former astronaut Scott Parazynski is making an attempt to climb Mt. Everest, and has been sharing his adventures via Twitter, and his blog on OnOrbit.com. As we reported in in our article about Parazynski in March, he wants to share his experiences with as many people as possible. Earlier today, his "media sherpa," Keith Cowing from NASA Watch.com joined Parazynski at base camp and both Cowing and Parazynski have agreed to take questions from readers of Universe Today and answer them during their time on Mt. Everest. Parazynski has been blogging and Twittering during his preparations for the climb, and he even wants to Twitter from the summit. “I want to tell the story of exploration here on Earth and the corollaries it has with space exploration,” Parazynski told Universe Today before he left for Kathmandu, Nepal. “The intent is to share the story with as many people as we can, particularly young people.”

So submit your questions in the comments section and we'll relay them on. Questions can be about mountain climbing or space exploration. Read more…

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Scientists have found an ancient ecosystem below an Antarctic glacier, one that has survived millions of years without light or oxygen in a pool of brine. The ecosystem contains a diversity of bacteria that thrive in cold, salty water loaded with iron and sulfur. The water averages 14 degrees Fahrenheit, but doesn't freeze because the water is three or four times saltier than the ocean. Scientists who discovered and studied the ecosystem found the bacteria convert the iron and sulfur into food. Life found in extreme conditions like this could explain how life might exist on other planets and serve as a model for how life can exist under ice. Some scientists have proposed that life could possibly be found under the outer ice layer of Jupiter's moon Europa.
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Researchers have long puzzled over why oxygen flourished in Earth's atmosphere starting around 2.4 billion years.

Called the "Great Oxidation Event," the transition "irreversibly changed surface environments on Earth and ultimately made advanced life possible," said Dominic Papineau of the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory.

Now, Papineau has co-authored a new study in the journal Nature,  which reveals new clues to the mystery in ancient sedimentary rocks.

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"Imagine a bright flower on a green plant in a little dome-shaped growth chamber, sitting on the landscape of the Moon, with the Earth rising up behind," said Taber MacCallum, CEO of Paragon Space Development Corporation. "I think it’s a great vision." That vision of the first Moon flower will likely become a reality, perhaps by 2014. Paragon has teamed up with Google Lunar XPRIZE contender Odyssey Moon to deliver a biological greenhouse to the lunar surface. "We've grown plants in space before, but this will be the first time we'll attempt to grow a plant on another world," MacCallum told Universe Today. "It's not just a great vision, but interesting science, too."
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In 2008, astronaut Scott Parazynski came within 24 hours of reaching the summit of Mt. Everest when a painful back injury forced him to abandon his climb. Now, Parazynski is on his way back for another attempt at summitting the world's highest mountain peak. But this time, he wants to take the rest of the world with him. If everything works as planned, Parazynski will blog, podcast, vodcast and more during the climb, and he even wants to Twitter from the summit. "I want to tell the story of exploration here on Earth and the corollaries it has with space exploration," Parazynski told Universe Today before he left for Kathmandu, Nepal. "They are both very hostile, unforgiving environments that require a lot of training, a lot of gear, and a lot of thought. The intent is to share the story with as many people as we can, particularly young people." Parazynski and his team have even agreed to take questions from readers of Universe Today and answer them during their climb.
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Indian scientists flying a giant balloon experiment have announced the discovery of three new species of bacteria from the stratosphere.

In all, 12 bacterial and six fungal colonies were detected, nine of which, based on gene sequencing, showed greater than 98 percent similarity with reported known species on earth. Three bacterial colonies, however, represented totally new species. All three boast significantly higher UV resistance compared to their nearest phylogenetic neighbors on Earth.

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It has been theorised for a long time that the dwarf planet Ceres may be harbouring a lot of water. With the promise of water comes the hope that life may be present on this little world orbiting the Sun in the asteroid belt. You may be forgiven in thinking that the search for life in the Solar System has gone a little crazy, after all, we haven't found life anywhere else apart from our own planet. However, if we do discover life on other planetary bodies apart from Earth, perhaps the panspermia hypothesis is more than just an academic curiosity. So why is Ceres suddenly so interesting? Firstly, it probably has water. Secondly, the ex-asteroid is so small that fragments of Ceres could have been kicked into space by meteorite impacts more readily than other larger planetary bodies, making it a prime candidate for seeding life on Earth…
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How ironic. Not content with searching for life on Mars, the Russian space agency and the US-based Planetary Society will soon be sending terrestrial life to the Martian moon Phobos. The mini-interplanetary travellers will consist of bacteria, spores, seeds, crustaceans, insects and fungi. Why? To see how biological life, in various forms, deals with space travel spanning three years.

So if you thought that a human (or monkey) would be the first of Earth's ambassadors to land on Mars or one of its moons, you'd be very mistaken…
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From orbit, Olympus Mons dominates the landscape of the Tharsis region on Mars. At 24 kilometers (15 miles) high, and 550 kilometers (340 miles) in diameter, the huge volcano is over three times larger than Mount Everest. But Olympus Mons has a structure that is somewhat lopsided: it is elongated to the northwest, shortened to the southeast. A new study reveals that the 'lopsidedness' may mean warm magma and possibly water could be close enough to Olympus Mons' surface to support thermophilic (heat-loving) bacteria like those found near hydrothermal vents on Earth.
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