The next generation of advanced telescopes could sharpen the hunt for potential extraterrestrial life by closely scrutinizing the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets, new research suggests.
Astrobiology
Jan 29, 2024
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343
All modern life shares a robust, hardy, efficient system of intertwined chemicals that propagate themselves. This system must have emerged from a simpler, less efficient, more delicate one. But what was that system, and why ...
Astrobiology
Jan 26, 2024
3
152
We know of Mars as the red planet, for its surface and atmosphere is caked in endless swirling dust of rusted iron, the rusting action provided by the always-eager oxygen. But this was not always so.
Astrobiology
Jan 24, 2024
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36
On October 19, 2017, astronomers with the Pan-STARRS survey detected an interstellar object (ISO) passing through our solar system for the first time. The object, known as 1I/2017 U1 'Oumuamua, stimulated significant scientific ...
Astronomy
Jan 15, 2024
2
69
Does the size of an exomoon help determine if life could form on an exoplanet it's orbiting? This is something a February 2022 study published in Nature Communications hoped to address as a team of researchers investigated ...
Planetary Sciences
Jan 15, 2024
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14
A team of astrophysicists and astronomers from Harbin Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University and Peking University has found evidence from Voyager 2 data showing that Jupiter has at least three magnetosheath jets. ...
Spring, summer, fall and winter—the seasons on Earth change every few months, around the same time every year. It's easy to take this cycle for granted here on Earth, but not every planet has a regular change in seasons. ...
Planetary Sciences
Jan 10, 2024
1
12
A recent study posted to the arXiv preprint server and accepted to The Astrophysical Journal uses computer models to investigate why the exoplanet, TRAPPIST-1c, could not possess a thick carbon dioxide (CO2) atmosphere despite ...
Planetary Sciences
Jan 2, 2024
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31
Scientists at MIT, the University of Birmingham, and elsewhere say that astronomers' best chance of finding liquid water, and even life on other planets, is to look for the absence, rather than the presence, of a chemical ...
Astronomy
Dec 29, 2023
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235
As astronomers have begun to gather data on the atmospheres of planets, we're learning about their compositions and evolution. Thick atmospheres are the easiest to study, but these same thick atmospheres can hide the surface ...
Planetary Sciences
Dec 27, 2023
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42
