On July 16, 2024, a daytime meteor shook New York City with a sonic boom as it passed just south of the Statue of Liberty. Now, an international team of researchers reports in the journal Science Advances that a short time ...
Space Exploration
Jul 15, 2026
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149
Scientists have detected evidence of landslides on Pluto for the first time. A paper published in the journal Icarus reports that images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft during a flyby revealed six large landslides in ...
Sugars are key biomolecules in living organisms, as they form the backbone of DNA and RNA and play a fundamental role in metabolic processes. In theories of the origin of life, sugars are also essential for the synthesis ...
Astronomy
Jul 13, 2026
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247
When it comes to the search for life elsewhere in the universe, methane and other chemical compounds are seen as signs of biology because they are often produced by living microbes. However, scientists can be misled because ...
Like a shelf in an old house, the Earth collects a lot of dust from its surroundings. This "space dust" is mostly made up of micrometeorites that survive atmospheric entry and provides researchers with a cheap and easy way ...
In September 2025, NASA announced that its Perseverance rover had discovered a potential biosignature, which is a substance or structure that might have a biological origin. A new paper, published in Science Advances, unambiguously ...
Astrobiology
Jun 24, 2026
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146
Vegetarians need not worry yet—plants will be on Earth for a long time to come. But not forever. The sun will ultimately determine the long-term existence of life on Earth. Its total energy output, called luminosity, has ...
A biocontainment facility designed to protect Earth from potentially hazardous biotic contaminants from space should be part of a planned NASA base on the moon, a policy paper maintains.
Space Exploration
Jun 19, 2026
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2660
Could Earth have seeded Jupiter's moon Europa with bacterial life, where it could have taken hold in Europa's ocean and perhaps evolved into something more? That's the hypothesis of a new paper in the International Journal ...
The asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs also created an underground environment suited to supporting new life, and new research suggests it lasted for millions of years longer than previously suspected.
Astrobiology
Jun 9, 2026
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131
