Astrobiology
Defining Life I: What are Astrobiologists Looking For?
How can astrobiologists find extraterrestrial life? In everyday life, we usually don’t have any problem telling that a dog or…
Communicating Across the Cosmos 4: The Quest for a Rosetta Stone
On television and in the movies, it’s so easy. Aliens almost always speak English (at least in America they do).…
Communicating Across the Cosmos, Part 1: Shouting into the Darkness
Over the last 20 years, astronomers have discovered several thousand planets orbiting other stars. We now know that potentially habitable…
The Origins of Life Could Indeed Be “Interstellar”
Some of science's most pressing questions involve the origins of life on Earth. How did the first lifeforms emerge from…
Unusual Distributions of Organics Found in Titan’s Atmosphere
A new mystery of Titan has been uncovered by astronomers using their latest asset in the high altitude desert of…
Moons of Confusion: Why Finding Extraterrestrial Life may be Harder than we Thought
Astronomers and planetary scientists thought they knew how to find evidence of life on planets beyond our Solar System. But,…
A New Mantra: Follow the Methane — May Advance Search for Extraterrestrial Life
The search for life is largely limited to the search for water. We look for exoplanets at the correct distances…
Cassini Spacecraft Confirms Subsurface Ocean on Enceladus
Ever since the Cassini spacecraft first spied water vapor and ice spewing from fractures in Enceladus’ frozen surface in 2005,…
New Technique Could Measure Exoplanet Atmospheric Pressure, an Indicator of Habitability
Measuring the atmospheric pressure of a distant exoplanet may seem like a daunting task but astronomers at the University of…
Martian Meteorite Could Have Contained Ancient Water And Life, NASA Paper Says
Could this meteorite show evidence of ancient water and life on Mars? That's one possibility raised in a new paper…