Space and astronomy news
I’ve said many times in the past that the Earth is the best planet in the Universe. No matter where we go, we’ll never find a planet that’s a better home to Earth life than Earth. Of course, that’s because we, and all other Earth life evolved in this environment. Evolution adapted us to this …
Continue reading “Better Than Earth? Are There Superhabitable Worlds In The Milky Way?”
According to a recent study presented at this year’s Goldschmidt Geochemistry Congress, there may be exoplanets out there that are more habitable than Earth
A team of Caltech researchers developed a new method that shows what Earth would look like to extra-terrestrial observers, which could seriously aid in the hunt for habitable exoplanets.
It’s all about the detail. In a way, Mars looks like a dusty, dead, dry, boring planet. But science says otherwise. Science says that Mars used to be wet and warm, with an atmosphere. And science says that it was wet and warm for billions of years, easily long enough for life to appear and …
As soon as the Cassini-Huygens mission arrived the Saturn system in 2004, it began to send back a number of startling discoveries. One of the biggest was the discovery of plume activity around the southern polar region of Saturn’s moon Enceladus’, which appears to be the result of geothermal activity and an ocean in the …
Continue reading “Enceladus is Filled with Tasty Food for Bacteria”
A new study conducted by an international team of scientists examines what the term “habitable zone” means and how next-generation telescopes will test our assumptions.
A new study has placed new constraints on the emergence of complex life, which effectively narrows what what we would consider to be a star’s “habitable zone”
The Earth wasn’t formed containing the necessary chemicals for life to begin. One well-supported theory, called the “late veneer theory”, suggests that the volatile chemicals needed for life arrived long after the Earth formed, brought here by meteorites. But a new study challenges the late veneer theory. Evidence shows that the Moon was created when …
Continue reading “Without the Impact that Formed the Moon, We Might Not Have Life on Earth”
Claudius Gros, the founder of Project Genesis, makes the case that when it comes to extrasolar planets, the rules of planetary protection need not apply.
Our newest planet-hunting telescope is up and running at the ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile. SPECULOOS, which stands for Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars, is actually four 1-meter telescopes working together. The first images from the ‘scopes are in, and though it hasn’t found any other Earths yet, the images are still …