Space and astronomy news
Here’s a thorny problem: What if life doesn’t always appear on planets that can support it? What if we find more and more exoplanets and determine that some of them are habitable? What if we also determine that life hasn’t appeared on them yet?
Could we send life-bringing comets to those planets and seed them with terrestrial life? And if we could do that, should we?
Continue reading “We Could Spread Life to the Milky Way With Comets. But Should We?”
Our modern telescopes are more powerful than their predecessors, and our research is more focused than ever. We keep discovering new things about the Solar System and finding answers to long-standing questions. But one of the big questions we still don’t have an answer for is: ‘How did life on Earth begin?’
Continue reading “Meteorites Bathed in Gamma Rays Produce More Amino Acids and Could Have Helped Life get Going on Earth”
If space colonization is in our future, we’ll have to use the resources available there. But we won’t be able to bring our established industrial methods and processes from Earth into space. Transporting heavy mining machinery to the Moon, Mars, or anywhere else in space is not feasible. And each of those environments is wildly different from Earth. We’ll need novel approaches to solve all of the problems facing us, and the approaches will have to be sustainable.
Terrestrial microbes are the foundation of Earth’s biosphere, and they could play an outsized role in space colonization.
Continue reading “Want to Colonize Space? Unleash the Power of Microbes”
There are 8 billion of us now. The UN says when the population peaks around the year 2100, there’ll be 11 billion human souls. Our population growth is colliding with the natural world on a greater scale than ever, and we’re losing between 200 and 2,000 species each year, according to the World Wildlife Federation.
An Engineer from the UK says that one way to mitigate the damage from the clash between humanity and nature is to create more habitat. We could do that by building Terran ecosystem preserves on Mars.
Continue reading “Should We Build a Nature Reserve on Mars?”
650 million years ago, Earth was completely or almost completely frozen, according to the Snowball Earth Hypothesis. As the atmosphere changed and Earth warmed up, it heralded the beginning of the Ediacaran Period. The Ediacaran Period marks the first time multicellular life was widespread on the planet. It predates the more well-known Cambrian Period, when more complex life emerged, diversified, and flourished.
Life during the Ediacaran Period faced a mass extinction, and it was Earth’s first one.
What happened?
Continue reading “Earth’s First Known Mass Extinction Event Starved Life of Oxygen”
Someday on Europa, there’ll be a robotic explorer diving beneath its icy surface to find volcanoes. Yes, even though it’s an ice world, Europa shows signs of internal activity. Planetary scientists think volcanic features, similar to hydrothermal vents here on Earth, exist on Europa’s ocean floor. But, how to understand them?
Continue reading “Hydrothermal Vents Under the Arctic Ice are Perfect Places to Practice Exploring Europa”
A few years from now, a small capsule will enter Earth’s atmosphere and float to the surface under a parachute. The parachute will likely be radar-reflective so that it can be easily tracked. It may land in Australia’s outback, a popular spot for sample returns. Scientists will take it to a sterilized, secure lab and carefully open it. Inside, there’ll be rock samples from Mars collected by the Perseverance Rover.
If a new study is correct, scientists should look carefully for dormant life in those samples.
Continue reading “Earth’s Hardiest Bacteria Could Survive Hundreds of Millions of Years Just Under the Surface of Mars”
Life might have wiped itself out on early Mars. That’s not as absurd as it sounds; that’s sort of what happened on Earth.
But life on Earth evolved and persisted, while on Mars, it didn’t.
Continue reading “Early Life on Mars Might Have Wiped Out Life on Mars”
A team of astronomers have proposed to hunt for signs of life by looking for the signature of nitrous oxide in alien atmospheres. It’s laughing gas, but it’s no joke.
Continue reading “Nitrous Oxide, aka “Laughing gas”, Could be an Indication of Life in an Exoplanet”
One of the most exciting aspects of space exploration today is how the field of astrobiology – the search for life in our Universe – has become so prominent. In the coming years, many robotic and even crewed missions will be bound for Mars that will aid in the ongoing search for life there. Beyond Mars, missions are planned for the outer Solar System that will explore satellites and bodies with icy exteriors and interior oceans – otherwise known as “Ocean Worlds.” These include the Jovian satellites Europa and Ganymede and Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus.
Similar to how missions to Mars have analyzed soil and rock samples for evidence of past life, the proposed missions will analyze liquid samples for the chemical signatures that we associate with life and biological processes (aka. “biosignatures”). To aid in this search, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have designed the Ocean Worlds Life Surveyor (OWLS), a suite of eight scientific instruments designed to sniff out biosignatures. In the coming decades, this suite could be used by robotic probes bound for “Ocean Worlds” all across the Solar System to search for signs of life.
Continue reading “NASA has Built a Collection of Instruments That Will Search for Life Inside Europa and Enceladus”