https://phys.org/space-news/astrobiology/ en-us Astrobiology news stories about origin and evolution of life in the Universe Past research has indicated Mars's largest northern basin, Utopia Planitia, was once the location of a large body of water, but details surrounding when this body of water may have existed have not been resolved. Researchers have now identified a ring of minerals in the region that have helped them string together a timeline of what happened there. The new study, published in Nature Communications, provides details about the ocean's timeline and what it says about life on Mars. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-mars-manganese-bathtub-reveals-ancient.html Astrobiology Fri, 29 May 2026 11:50:26 EDT news699274173 About a billion years ago, Earth started to come into its own. It was past the awkwardness of its younger years full of growing pains and turmoil: comet strikes and slimy water, including the Great Oxidation Event that flipped the world upside down. Roughly a billion years ago, the planet began to advance and mature, with plant life developing about 700 million years ago, but still with the occasional wild climate parties to keep things interesting. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-supercontinent-ancient-earth-snowball-phase.html Astrobiology Thu, 28 May 2026 11:20:04 EDT news699181908 On May 22, 2026, the Pentagon released a second batch of previously classified photos and videos showing what appear to be unexplained flying objects. These file dumps were the culmination of a process that was set in motion back in July 2023, when a group of government whistleblowers testified before Congress that the U.S. government was secretly in possession of extraterrestrial spacecraft and suspected alien body parts. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-aliens-earth-aerospace-scientist-interstellar.html Astrobiology Wed, 27 May 2026 10:01:14 EDT news699094082 Mars holds a special place in the solar system. It represents marginal habitability. This means it transitioned from warm and wet and potentially hospitable, to cold and dry and inhospitable. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-mars-marginal-exoplanets.html Astrobiology Tue, 26 May 2026 07:00:04 EDT news698993041 The thinking around exoplanet habitability is mostly concerned with a planet's distance from its star. Too close, and any surface water is boiled away into space. Too far, and surface water is frozen. Both are severe limits on the prospects for life. Habitability depends on an exoplanet being in the Goldilocks Zone, a distance range around a star where liquid water can persist. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-supermassive-black-holes-exoplanets-uninhabitable.html Astrobiology Mon, 25 May 2026 18:00:01 EDT news698921322 In his 1964 paper, "Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations," famed astrophysicist and radio astronomer Nikolai Kardashev addressed the types of transmissions (and at what energies) astronomers should search for in their Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). As part of his analysis, Kardashev proposed a universal scale for classifying the technological advancement of civilizations based on their overall energy consumption. The resulting Kardashev Scale (as it came to be known) came down to three categories. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-kardashev-conundrum-bitcoin-metric.html Astrobiology Thu, 21 May 2026 12:20:02 EDT news698582862 Suppose there are signs of extraterrestrial life and we have not yet been able to detect them. What does that mean? In Nature Astronomy, researchers discuss the consequences of these so-called false-negative results. "We are currently investing a great deal of money in missions that might need to be designed differently." https://phys.org/news/2026-05-extraterrestrial-life-space-missions-astrobiologists.html Astrobiology Thu, 21 May 2026 11:00:17 EDT news698570821 A discovery by a South Korean research team suggests that impact-generated lakes may have fostered early oxygen-producing life. A team of South Korean scientists has uncovered new evidence that could help explain how Earth's atmosphere became rich in oxygen, one of the most transformative events in the planet's history. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-asteroid-impact-site-reveals-early.html Astrobiology Wed, 20 May 2026 10:20:05 EDT news698490421 Looking back at 14 years of Hubble telescope data for Jupiter's moon Europa has given Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists a better understanding of its tenuous atmosphere. The findings have cast doubt on previous evidence suggesting that the icy moon intermittently discharges faint water plumes from a presumed subsurface ocean. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-reconsider-europa-vapor-plumes.html Astrobiology Mon, 18 May 2026 17:00:05 EDT news698337061 Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon, is also the solar system's largest satellite, even larger than the planet Mercury. It is also the only celestial body aside from Earth (and the gas giants) to have an intrinsic magnetic field. As if this didn't make the icy body interesting enough, scientists also predict that it has a massive interior ocean with more water than all of Earth's oceans combined. At present, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) is in transit to Ganymede to explore it for signs of habitability. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-geysers-juice-mission-explore-ganymede.html Astrobiology Tue, 12 May 2026 20:40:03 EDT news697810079 Earth's earliest continents may have set the chemical stage for life by regulating boron levels in ancient oceans, a new study in Terra Nova suggests. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-continents-stage-life-earth.html Astrobiology Wed, 06 May 2026 17:50:02 EDT news697304942 A collaborative team of scientists has discovered that life on Earth over three billion years ago relied on the metal molybdenum, which was incredibly scarce in the environment at the time. The study, published in Nature Communications, is the first to show that molybdenum was used by ancient life this far back in our planet's history. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-billion-years-earth-life-rare.html Astrobiology Tue, 05 May 2026 16:50:01 EDT news697215543 Expose an animal to extreme physical stress, and the expectation is simple: It will break down. But when UC Riverside scientists subjected fruit flies to forces many times stronger than Earth's gravity—a condition called hypergravity—the insects did something unexpected. They survived. They even mated and reproduced. Their movements and behaviors changed dramatically and then, over time, they recovered. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-hypergravity-fruit-flies-recover.html Space Exploration Fri, 01 May 2026 09:40:03 EDT news696845581 When you're looking for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, it helps to know what you're looking for and to go about it in the most efficient way. But work so far has generally not done so, writes Benjamin Zuckerman, an astrophysicist and emeritus professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). https://phys.org/news/2026-04-extraterrestrial-intelligence.html Astrobiology Fri, 01 May 2026 08:30:01 EDT news696769964 Laser sail propulsion is an idea that won't go away. By aiming powerful Earth-based lasers at tiny spacecraft with light sails, tiny spacecraft can be accelerated to near-relativistic speeds without carrying fuel or an energy source, and without carrying any kind of propulsion system at all. There are clear advantages to this idea, if it can be implemented. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-relativistic-swarm-image-proxima-meter.html Space Exploration Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:20:08 EDT news696769921 Manganese dioxide can convert amino acids into hydrogen cyanide (HCN) without requiring methane, a finding that solves a long-standing puzzle about the origin of this key prebiotic molecule on early Earth. Although HCN is central to origin-of-life theories, recent evidence suggests early Earth's atmosphere didn't contain sufficient methane needed for classic HCN-producing reactions. The newly found chemical pathway, reported by researchers from Science Tokyo, shows that HCN could instead have been continuously supplied from abundant amino acids. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-overlooked-mineral-quietly-powered-crucial.html Astrobiology Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:20:06 EDT news696762241 Astronomers can use telescopes to find specific molecules in the atmospheres of neighboring planets, in nebulae—clouds of interstellar dust and gas—hundreds or thousands of light-years away, or in galaxies beyond the far reaches of the Milky Way. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-potential-life-distant-planets-years.html Astronomy Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:40:01 EDT news696509641 NASA's Curiosity rover has identified seven new organic compounds on the planet Mars, according to new research published in Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-nasa-curiosity-rover-ancient-life.html Astrobiology Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:20:04 EDT news696161582 Long-duration spaceflight can chip away at an astronaut's health, prompting scientists to find new ways to make living in space easier on the body. The journey to outer space is incredibly dangerous, but crews must also face day-to-day hazards, such as exposure to cancer-causing radiation, microgravity and extreme isolation. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-scientists-focus-outer-space.html Space Exploration Thu, 23 Apr 2026 07:20:01 EDT news696141541 A team of astronomers led by Elisabeth Matthews at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) has made a discovery that highlights the limits of most current models of exoplanet atmospheres: water-ice clouds on a distant Jupiter-like exoplanet called Epsilon Indi Ab. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-astronomers-exo-jupiter-clouds.html Astrobiology Wed, 22 Apr 2026 12:20:01 EDT news696075421 Human history is littered with expired civilizations, and scholars and archaeologists have made a determined effort to understand why and how civilizations collapse. They've found that symptoms like a growing wealth gap and distrust of the elites are precursors to civilizational collapse. But what about global technological civilizations like the one we live in now? How long can they last? What causes their collapse? How can they recover? https://phys.org/news/2026-04-civilizations-collapse.html Astrobiology Wed, 22 Apr 2026 09:00:04 EDT news696059162 A team of scientists using the ChemCam instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has discovered the highest amounts of iron, manganese, and zinc ever found together in Gale Crater on Mars. Minerals with these metals were found in remarkably well-preserved ripples in rocks, indicating the high likelihood that a shallow lake existed at this location. The findings are published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-nasa-curiosity-rover-uncovers-metalrich.html Astrobiology Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:40:03 EDT news696065599 NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has uncovered a diverse mix of organic molecules on Mars, including chemicals widely considered building blocks for the origin of life on Earth. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-mars-rover-compounds.html Astrobiology Tue, 21 Apr 2026 05:00:03 EDT news695923621 The possibility of life on other planets is one of the biggest mysteries in science. But what would happen if we actually found it? Our scientists are preparing for this possibility by helping to develop a new system that can analyze samples for signs of extraterrestrial life while keeping the planet safe. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-device-aims-earth-martian-microbes.html Astrobiology Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:40:04 EDT news695904393 Scientists have long known that fungi are resilient, but a new study suggests that some strains might survive every step of the long, brutal trip to Mars. In a paper published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, researchers isolated fungal microbes from NASA cleanrooms—facilities used in the assembly, testing, and launch of spacecraft—that had persisted after decontamination. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-resilient-fungus-survive-mars-space.html Astrobiology Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:00:01 EDT news695634361 Do aliens exist? Could Earth really be the only planet hosting intelligent life? https://phys.org/news/2026-04-aliens-real-scientists-extraterrestrial-life.html Astrobiology Thu, 16 Apr 2026 17:40:03 EDT news695561461 Unfortunately for science fiction fans, desert worlds outside our solar system are unlikely to host life, according to new research from the University of Washington. Scientists show that an Earth-sized planet needs at least 20 to 50% of the water in Earth's oceans to maintain a critical natural cycle that keeps water on the surface. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-planets-life-scientists-previously-thought.html Astrobiology Wed, 15 Apr 2026 18:40:03 EDT news695485502 A research team has developed a new approach to detecting life beyond Earth that does not rely on identifying specific biological markers. Instead, the study suggests that life may be detectable through patterns emerging across groups of planets, offering a new framework for astrobiology in situations where traditional biosignatures are ambiguous or unreliable. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-alien-life-plain-sight-statistical.html Astrobiology Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:20:04 EDT news695476405 Caltech researchers have identified geological features on Mars that could point to the existence of a long-dried ocean that once covered a third of the Red Planet's surface. The research was conducted by former Caltech postdoctoral scholar Abdallah Zaki and Caltech professor of geology Michael Lamb. The study is described in a paper appearing in the journal Nature. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-bathtub-hints-ancient-martian-ocean.html Astrobiology Wed, 15 Apr 2026 15:20:09 EDT news695475961 Scientists have found that young stellar cousins of our sun are calming down and dimming more quickly in their X-ray output than previously thought, according to a new study using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. A paper describing the results is published in The Astrophysical Journal. Unlike in the new movie "Project Hail Mary," this quieting of young stars is a benefit for the prospects for life on orbiting planets around these stars, not a threat. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-young-stars-dim-quickly-ray.html Astrobiology Tue, 14 Apr 2026 19:20:01 EDT news695398382