A robotic rover deployed in the most Mars-like environment on Earth, the Atacama Desert in Chile, has successfully recovered subsurface soil samples during a trial mission to find signs of life. The samples contained unusual ...
Astrobiology
Feb 28, 2019
10
450
An experiment shows that one of the basic units of life—nucleobases—could have originated within giant gas clouds interspersed between the stars.
Astrobiology
Sep 27, 2019
46
241
A Ph.D. student and his supervisor have developed a simple way to test for active life on Mars and other planets using equipment already on the Mars Curiosity rover and planned for future use on the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin ...
Astrobiology
Aug 13, 2025
1
237
Is there life outside our planet?
Astronomy
Oct 2, 2020
0
237
As NASA's Perseverance rover begins its search for ancient life on the surface of Mars, a new study suggests that the Martian subsurface might be a good place to look for possible present-day life on the Red Planet.
Astrobiology
Apr 22, 2021
12
902
Everything around you – your desk, your laptop, your coffee cup – in fact, even you – is made of stardust, the stuff forged in the fiery furnaces of stars that died before our sun was born. Probing the space surrounding a ...
Astronomy
Dec 21, 2018
5
455
The mystery of why life uses molecules with specific orientations has deepened with a discovery that RNA—a key molecule thought to have potentially held the instructions for life before DNA emerged—can favor making the building ...
Astrobiology
Nov 21, 2024
1
235
In 2020, NASA and European-Russian missions will look for evidence of past life on Mars. But while volcanic, igneous rock predominates on the Red Planet, virtually the entire Earth fossil record comes from sedimentary rocks.
Space Exploration
May 17, 2019
3
234
The transition from simple chemistry to the complex biology of molecules that gave rise to life is a puzzle that scientists have been trying to solve for ages.
How large would an extraterrestrial city have to be for current telescopes to see it? Would it need to be a planet-sized metropolis like Star Wars' Coruscant? Or could we see an alien equivalent of Earth's own largest urban ...
Astrobiology
Jun 19, 2023
0
232
