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Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Enrico Fermi’s lunchtime question at wartime Los Alamos, “Where is everybody?” has been both a gift and a problem to scientists ever since. Known as “Fermi’s Paradox,” it simply asks, why, since life on Earth is ubiquitous and developed very early in Earth’s history, and the galaxy is very old and…
5σ contrast limits at J (bottom left), H (top left), and K (bottom right) from Gemini/NIRI and at 𝐾′ from Keck II/NIRC2 (top right). The combined images are shown in the insets of the panels, where Gliese 12 is at the star symbols. The maximum values of the image dynamic range were set to be 20 times…
Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of ISS dust from the original dust (A) and incubations at 50% ERH (B) show fibrous dust materials, but no fungal growth. Fungal growth including spores, elongated hyphae, and different fungal propagules was observed in ISS dust incubated at 85% ERH (C) and 100% ERH (D) for 2 weeks at 25℃….
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Florida Tech astrobiologist Manasvi Lingam has asked life’s biggest questions from a young age. Though he can’t recall his exact queries, he says his interests were perfectly consistent with those of other children: dinosaurs and aliens. On bus rides with his family, he would pepper his parents with questions about the…
Alkylsulfonic acids detected in room-temperature residues of the irradiated ices by two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled to time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Gas chromatogram analyses from the a 100 nA SO2/CH4, b 1000 nA SO2/CH4, c 5000 nA SO2/CH4, d 100 nA SO2/CH4/H2O, e 1000 nA SO2/CH4/H2O, and the f 5000 nA SO2/CH4/H2O experiments are shown. The peaks in the chromatograms have been scaled…
Conceptual image of an exoplanet with an advanced extraterrestrial civilization. Structures on the right are orbiting solar panel arrays that harvest light from the parent star and convert it into electricity that is then beamed to the surface via microwaves. The exoplanet on the left illustrates other potential technosignatures: city lights (glowing circular structures) on…
Artist conception of 126 planets in the latest TESS-Keck Survey catalog is based on data including planet radius, mass, density, and temperature. Question marks represent planets requiring more data for full characterization. Credit: W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko While thousands of planets have been discovered around other stars, relatively little is known about them. A…
The Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico consists of consists of 27 individual radio telescopes that together make observations of distant objects. Credit: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory Are there any advanced alien civilizations elsewhere in our galaxy? We don’t know. All we do know is that…
Red hexagons mark the four sites where the Perseverance rover collected rock samples around the sediment fan in Jezero crater in 2022. Credit: NASA Over the course of nearly five months in 2022, NASA’s Perseverance rover collected rock samples from Mars that could rewrite the history of water on the red planet and even contain…
Possible relationship between strike–slip motion and jet activity at Enceladus. Lateral extension along transtensional “pull-apart zones” allows water to rise and feed material to cryovolcanic jets. Credit: James Tuttle Keane Over the course of its elliptical orbit, the moon Enceladus is squeezed unevenly by Saturn’s gravitational pull and deforms from a spherical shape into a…