When scientists detected phosphine in Venus' atmosphere in 2020, it triggered renewed, animated discussions about Venus and its potential habitability. It would be weird if the detection didn't generate interest since phosphine ...
Astrobiology
Jan 12, 2024
0
51
When we look at the moon, either through a pair of binoculars, a telescope, or past footage from the Apollo missions, we see a landscape that's riddled with what appear to be massive sinkholes. But these "sinkholes" aren't ...
Astrobiology
Jan 11, 2024
0
6
One of the fascinating things about being a human in this age is that we can do more than wonder about other life and other civilizations. We can actually look for them, although there are obvious limitations to our search. ...
Astrobiology
Jan 9, 2024
0
93
As noted at NASA's 2019 Carlsbad Conference, we have good reason to think that life could have started on Mars using the same geo-organic chemistry that started life on Earth. If Martian life persists today on Mars, it may ...
Astrobiology
Jan 5, 2024
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23
Some years ago I remember running the SETI at Home screensaver and would watch it for hours to see if any peaks appeared naively thinking they might be signals from an alien civilization. There is no doubt that the search ...
Astrobiology
Jan 4, 2024
1
86
In 1950, during a lunchtime conversation with colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, famed physicist Enrico Fermi asked the question that launched a hundred (or more) proposed resolutions. "Where is Everybody?"
Astronomy
Jan 3, 2024
27
118
Telescopes have been collecting copious amounts of data on exoplanets in recent years. One of the most common datasets tracks what are known as transits, when an exoplanet crosses in front of its host star and dims the star's ...
Astrobiology
Dec 19, 2023
0
56
Communicating between species isn't something that only has to take place between space-faring civilizations. There are plenty of species here on our home planet that communicate using a variety of sights, sounds, and smells. ...
Astrobiology
Dec 15, 2023
0
35
We all know that to have life on a world, you need three critical items: water, warmth, and food. Now add to that a factor called "entropy." It plays a role in determining if a given planet can sustain and grow complex life.
Astrobiology
Dec 14, 2023
0
26
In the quest to understand how and where life might arise in the galaxy, astronomers search for its building blocks. Complex Organic Molecules (COMs) are some of those blocks, and they include things like formaldehyde and ...
Astronomy
Dec 14, 2023
0
40
