Space and astronomy news
Venus is often described as a hellscape. The surface temperature breaches the melting point of lead, and though its atmosphere is dominated by carbon dioxide, it contains enough sulfuric acid to satisfy the comparison with Hades.
But conditions throughout Venus’ ample atmosphere aren’t uniform. There are locations where some of life’s building blocks could resist the planet’s inhospitable nature.
Continue reading “Another Building Block of Life Can Handle Venus’ Sulphuric Acid”
The discovery of dark oxygen at an abyssal plain on the ocean floor generated a lot of interest. Could this oxygen source support life in the ocean depths? And if it can, what does that mean for places like Enceladus and Europa?
What does it mean for our notion of habitability?
Continue reading “Dark Oxygen Could Change Our Understanding of Habitability”
Where on Earth did life originate, and where else could it occur? A comprehensive answer is most likely a long way off. But it might depend on how many suitable sites for abiogenesis there are on different worlds.
Continue reading “Asking the Big Question: Where Did Life Originate?”
Life is rare, and it requires exactly the right environmental mix to establish itself. And there’s one surprising contributor to that perfect mix: gigantic black holes.
Continue reading “Life Needs Black Holes to Survive”
According to NASA’s Perseverance rover, ancient rocks in Jezero Crater formed in the presence of water. These sedimentary rocks are more than 3.5 billion years old and may predate the appearance of life on Earth. When and if these samples are returned to Earth, scientists hope to determine if they hold evidence of ancient Martian life.
Continue reading “Ancient Rocks in Mars’ Jezero Crater Confirm Habitability”
There’s something wrong with us.
We’ve risen to prominence on a world that’s positively “rippling with life,” as Carl Sagan described it. The more we study our planet, the more we find life eking out an existence in the most unlikely of places.
Yet we seem destined to drive many species to extinction, even though we see those extinctions coming from miles away.
As an indication of how serious the problem is, one group of researchers suggests we use the Moon—yes, the Moon—as a safe repository for Earth’s biodiversity.
Continue reading “Scientists Want to Use the Moon to Safeguard Earth’s Biodiversity”
Panspermia is an innately attractive idea that’s gained prominence in recent decades. Yet, among working scientists, it gets little attention. There are good reasons for their relative indifference, but certain events spark renewed interest in panspermia, even among scientists.
The appearance of Oumuamua in our Solar System in 2017 was one of them.
Continue reading “How Oumuamua Changes Our Perspective on Galactic Panspermia”
I have always found Mariana’s Trench fascinating, it’s like an alien world right on our doorstep. Any visitor to the oceans or seas of our planet will hopefully get to see fish flitting around and whilst they can survive in this alien underwater world they still need oxygen to survive. Breathing in oxygen is a familiar experience to us, we inflate our lungs and suck air into them to keep us topped up with life giving oxygen. Fish are different, they get their oxygen as water flows over their gills. Water is full of oxygen which at the surface comes from the atmosphere or plants. But deep down, thousands of meters beneath the surface, it is not so easy. Now a team of scientists think that potato-sized chunks of metal called nodules act like natural batteries, interacting with the water and putting oxygen into the deep water of the ocean.
Continue reading “A Surprising Source of Oxygen in the Deep Sea”
What does it take to have life at another world? Astrobiologists say you need water, warmth, and something for life to eat. If it’s there, it’ll leave signs of itself in the form of organic molecules called amino acids. Now, NASA scientists think that those “signatures” of life—or potential life—could exist just under the icy surfaces of Europa and Enceladus.
Continue reading “We Might Find Life Just Under the Surface on Europa”
There’s no perfect way of doing anything, including searching for exoplanets. Every planet-hunting method has some type of bias. We’ve found most exoplanets using the transit method, which is biased toward larger planets. Larger planets closer to their stars block more light, meaning we detect large planets transiting in front of their stars more readily than we detect small ones.
That’s a problem because some research says that life-supporting planets are more likely to be small, like Earth. It’s all because of moons and streaming instability.
Continue reading “If We Want To Find Life-Supporting Worlds, We Should Focus on Small Planets With Large Moons”