Artist’s impression of neutron stars merging, producing gravitational waves and resulting in a kilonova. Credit: Mark Garlick, University of Warwick, from Wikipedia licensed under CC BY 4.0. Could it be that human existence depends on gravitational waves? Some key elements in our biological makeup may come from astrophysical events that occur because gravitational waves exist,…
Category: Astrobiology
Saturn's largest moon most likely uninhabitable
This image shows a flattened (Mercator) projection of the Huygens probe’s view of Saturn’s moon Titan from 10 kilometers altitude. The images that make up this view were taken on Jan. 14, 2005, with the descent imager/spectral radiometer onboard the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe. The Huygens probe was delivered to Titan by the Cassini…
Testing shows some bacteria could survive under Mars conditions
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain An international team of radiation specialists, biologists and infectious disease experts has found four types of bacteria that are capable of surviving exposure to the hostile Mars environment. In their study, published in the journal Astrobiology, the group exposed four human-infectious bacteria to Mars-like conditions. Over the past several years, microbiologists…
Signs of life detectable in single ice grain emitted from extraterrestrial moons, experimental setup shows
An artist’s rendition of Saturn’s moon Enceladus depicts hydrothermal activity on the seafloor and cracks in the moon’s icy crust that allow material from the watery interior to be ejected into space. New research shows that instruments destined for the next missions could find traces of a single cell in a single ice grain contained…
SETI Institute employs a novel ellipsoid technique when searching for signals from distant civilizations
SETI ellipsoid. Credit: Zayna Sheikh A team of researchers from the SETI Institute, Berkeley SETI Research Center and the University of Washington reported an exciting development for the field of astrophysics and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), using observations from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission to monitor the SETI Ellipsoid, a method…
Astrophysicists explore links between atmospheric oxygen and detecting extraterrestrial technology on distant planets
Air Supply: Coined by astrophysics Adam Frank and Amedeo Balbi, the “oxygen bottleneck” describes the critical threshold that separates worlds capable of fostering technological civilizations from those that fall short. “Without a ready source of fire, you’re never going to develop higher technology,” says Frank . Credit: University of Rochester illustration / Michael Osadciw In…
New research on microbes expands the known limits for life on Earth and beyond
The Oceans Across Space and Time research team collected brine from South Bay Salt Works during an initial field trip in 2019. Credit: Anne Dekas New research led by Stanford University scientists predicts life can persist in extremely salty environments, beyond the limit previously thought possible. The study, published Dec. 22 in Science Advances, is…
Protein fragments ID two new 'extremophile' microbes—and may help find alien life
Protein fragments identified new types of extremophiles, which survive harsh environments on Earth, and could someday help astrobiologists identify alien life. Credit: Journal of Proteome Research (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.3c00538 Perfectly adapted microorganisms live in extreme environments, from deep-sea trenches to mountaintops. Learning more about how these extremophiles survive in hostile conditions could inform scientists about…
COSMIC: Expanding the search for extraterrestrial intelligence
The positions of all the stars targeted by COSMIC thus far with data recorded into a database of potential signals. We have collected data on over 485,000 sources across the frequency range of 2 to 45GHz. The coordinates of each small dot are a targeted star, and the filled-in patches of the sky represent regions…
Confirmation of ancient lake on Mars offers hope that Perseverance rover's soil and rock samples hold traces of life
Mars Perseverance Rover RIMFAX ground penetrating radar measurements of the Hawksbill Gap region of the Jezero Crater Western Delta, Mars. Hawksbill Gap. Credit: Svein-Erik Hamran, Tor Berger, David Paige, University of Oslo, UCLA, California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA If life ever existed on Mars, the Perseverance rover’s verification of lake sediments at…