Confessions of a Former Fireball: How Earth Transformed Itself From a Fiery Ball to a Habitable Planet
Researchers at Yale and Caltech have a bold new theory to explain how Earth transformed itself from a fiery, carbon-clouded ball of rocks into a…
Astrobiology
Key Discovery in Search for Origin of Life – Astronomers Detect Largest Molecule Yet in a Cosmic “Dust-Trap”
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, researchers at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands have for the first time detected dimethyl ether in…
New Astrobiology Research Predicts Alien Life “As We Don’t Know It”
The search for alien life has been restricted to using life on Earth as the reference, essentially looking for “life as we know it” beyond…
Does Planet Earth Have a Mind of Its Own?
What is humanity? Do our minds set us apart from the rest of nature and from the rest of Earth? Or does Earth have a…
Exploring Alien Worlds With NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope [Video]
The James Webb Space Telescope is taking exoplanet studies to the next level, helping us characterize the atmospheres of Earth-sized alien worlds for the first…
Day of Discovery: Close-Knit Family of 7 Earth-Size Planets
Five years ago, astronomers revealed a spectacular collection of other worlds: the TRAPPIST-1 system. Newspapers around the world printed the discovery on their front pages:…
Planetary Intelligence: Can a Planet Have a Mind of Its Own?
Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank discusses why cognitive activity operating on a planetary scale is necessary to tackle global issues such as climate change. The collective…
Webb Space Telescope Might Be Able To Detect Other Civilizations by Their Air Pollution
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched last December, has been slowly powering up its instruments and unfurling its sunshield, and is now in the…
How Life Came to Earth – Quantum Mechanical Tunneling Effect Might Play a Role
Research team from Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy finds clue to possible extraterrestrial origin of peptides. Researchers from the…
What the Rise of Oxygen on Early Earth Tells Us About Alien Life on Other Planets
Deeper understanding of Earth’s atmosphere could help us identify signs of life beyond our solar system. When did the Earth reach oxygen levels sufficient to…
A Sun-Like Star Blasted Out a Massive Flare That Would Be Devastating for Life on Earth
In the search for “potentially-habitable” extrasolar planets, one of the main things scientists look at is stellar activity. Whereas stars like our own, a G-type…
Webb Space Telescope Provides New Tools To Search for the Building Blocks of Life on Distant Planets
How NASA in Silicon Valley Will Use Webb to Study Distant Worlds NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is getting ready to give us the best…
Mars Curiosity Rover Sees a Strong Carbon Signature in a Bed of Rocks – Could Indicate Biological Activity
Carbon is critical to life, as far as we know. So anytime we detect a strong carbon signature somewhere like Mars, it could indicate biological…
Extraordinary Microbes Living in Extremely Harsh Volcanic Lake Show How Life Might Have Existed on Mars
Lake is dominated by bacteria from a single ‘extremophile’ genus. A few specialist microbes survive conditions analogous to those of Mars’ early history, reports a…
NASA’s Curiosity Rover Measures Intriguing Carbon Signature on Mars – Possible Indication of Biological Activity
The type of carbon detected is associated with biological processes on Earth. Curiosity scientists offer several explanations for the unusual carbon signals. After analyzing powdered…
Newly Discovered Carbon on Mars: Origin May Be Biologically Produced Methane
NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars on August 6, 2012, and since then has roamed Gale Crater taking samples and sending the results back home…
The Search for Life on Mars: Organic Molecules in Martian Meteorite Not From Aliens
Martian meteorite’s organic materials origin not biological, formed by geochemical interactions between water and rock. The search for life on Mars can teach us about…
Sending Life to the Stars: Scientists Contemplate Launching Tiny Lifeforms Into Interstellar Space
No longer solely in the realm of science fiction, the possibility of interstellar travel has appeared, tantalizingly, on the horizon. Although we may not see…
