The smallest flowering plant on Earth might become a nutritious foodstuff for astronauts in the future, as well as a highly efficient source of oxygen. To help test their suitability for space, floating clumps of watermeal—individually ...
Space Exploration
Oct 6, 2023
1
49
The best hope for finding life on another world isn't listening for coded messages or traveling to distant stars, it's detecting the chemical signs of life in exoplanet atmospheres. This long hoped-for achievement is often ...
Astrobiology
Jun 19, 2023
0
1069
New research led by Carnegie's Yingwei Fei provides a framework for understanding the interiors of super-Earths—rocky exoplanets between 1.5 and 2 times the size of our home planet—which is a prerequisite to assess their ...
Astronomy
Feb 9, 2021
2
100
Nitriles, a class of organic molecules with a cyano group—that is, a carbon atom bound with a triple unsaturated bond to a nitrogen atom—are typically toxic. But paradoxically, they are also a key precursor for molecules ...
Astronomy
Jul 8, 2022
1
641
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," said Carl Sagan. This phrase is the standard that astronomers will be applying to a curious signal captured with China's "Sky Eye" telescope that might be a transmission ...
Astronomy
Jun 16, 2022
0
648
While thousands of planets have been discovered around other stars, relatively little is known about them. A NASA catalog featuring 126 exotic, newly discovered worlds includes detailed measurements that allow for comparisons ...
Astrobiology
May 23, 2024
0
269
Astronomers refer to all the elements heavier than helium as "metals," even elements that are typically found in gaseous form. In the big bang only hydrogen and helium (and a trace of lithium) were created while the "metals" ...
Astronomy
Aug 2, 2021
4
666
Astronomers have uncovered a new way of searching for life in the cosmos. Harsh ultraviolet radiation flares from red suns, once thought to destroy surface life on planets, might help uncover hidden biospheres. Their radiation ...
Astronomy
Aug 13, 2019
0
648
A pair of researchers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has published a perspective piece in the journal Science outlining the efforts being conducted this decade to find out if Mars once hosted life. In their ...
Researchers have analyzed samples of the asteroid Ryugu collected by the Japanese Space Agency's Hayabusa2 spacecraft and found uracil, one of the informational units that make up RNA, the molecules that contain the instructions ...
Astrobiology
Mar 21, 2023
2
410
