https://phys.org/space-news/astrobiology en-us Astrobiology news stories about origin and evolution of life in the Universe Scientists have developed a new method to compute how tides affect the interiors of planets and moons. Importantly, the new study looks at the effects of body tides on objects that don't have a perfectly spherical interior structure, which is an assumption of most previous models. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-spectral-method-tidal-effects-planet.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Thu, 07 Nov 2024 14:08:02 EST news650210881 The key to unlocking the secrets of distant planets starts right here on Earth. Researchers at Tohoku University, the University of Tokyo, and Hokkaido University have developed a model that considers various atmospheric chemical reactions to estimate how the atmosphere—and the first signs of life—evolved on Earth. The study is published in Astrobiology. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-life-began-earth-ancient-atmosphere.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Wed, 30 Oct 2024 09:19:04 EDT news649498742 Evidence suggests Mars could very well have been teeming with life billions of years ago. Now cold, dry, and stripped of what was once a potentially protective magnetic field, the red planet is a kind of forensic scene for scientists investigating whether Mars was indeed once habitable, and if so, when. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-mars-habitable-thought.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Tue, 29 Oct 2024 15:51:04 EDT news649435862 A team led by researchers at MIT has discovered that a distant interstellar cloud contains an abundance of pyrene, a type of large, carbon-containing molecule known as a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH). https://phys.org/news/2024-10-discovery-carbon-molecules-distant-interstellar.html Astrobiology Thu, 24 Oct 2024 14:00:01 EDT news648994420 Since its launch in late 2021, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has raised the possibility that we could detect signs of life on exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-rocky-planets-orbiting-small-stars.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Wed, 23 Oct 2024 11:14:03 EDT news648900841 Billions of years ago, long before anything resembling life as we know it existed, meteorites frequently pummeled the planet. One such space rock crashed down about 3.26 billion years ago, and even today, it's revealing secrets about Earth's past. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-giant-meteorite-impact-billion-years.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Mon, 21 Oct 2024 15:21:21 EDT news648742875 While actual evidence for life on Mars has never been found, a new NASA study proposes microbes could find a potential home beneath frozen water on the planet's surface. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-life-mars-ice-possibilities.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Thu, 17 Oct 2024 13:20:04 EDT news648390001 Scientists at the SETI Institute and partners from Penn State University used the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) to search for signs of alien technology in the TRAPPIST-1 star system. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-scientists-allen-telescope-array-radio.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Wed, 16 Oct 2024 10:00:01 EDT news648289779 Researchers have used the chemical fingerprints of zinc contained in meteorites to determine the origin of volatile elements on Earth. The results suggest that without 'unmelted' asteroids, there may not have been enough of these compounds on Earth for life to emerge. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-blocks-life-earth-zinc-fingerprints.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Fri, 11 Oct 2024 14:00:01 EDT news647855521 Once you know where to look for them, lichens are everywhere. These composite organisms—fungal and photosynthetic partners joined into a greater whole—can survive on a vast array of surfaces, from rocks and trees to bare ground and buildings. They are known from every continent, and almost certainly every land mass on planet Earth; some species have even survived exposure to the exterior of the International Space Station. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-mars-analog-stations-lichen-biodiversity.html Astrobiology Fri, 11 Oct 2024 12:38:28 EDT news647869103 An international team of researchers with a wide range of backgrounds has found evidence of asteroids providing the compounds necessary for life to get its start on Earth. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the group describes their study of a small sample of material collected from Ryugu that was brought back to Earth. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-ryugu-sample-analyses-asteroids-compounds.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Tue, 08 Oct 2024 10:47:01 EDT news647603214 A Canadian-led international study has revealed new insights into the atmosphere of GJ 9827 d—an exoplanet orbiting the star GJ 9827 in the constellation Pisces, about 98 light-years from Earth—using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). https://phys.org/news/2024-10-astronomers-webb-probe-steam-world.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Mon, 07 Oct 2024 10:28:37 EDT news647515712 A team of engineers and planetary scientists at Western University's Institute for Earth and Space Exploration, in Canada, has found that it might be possible to produce food for space travelers by feeding bacteria asteroid material, resulting in the growth of an edible biomass. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-possibility-asteroid-material-edible-biomass.html Space Exploration Astrobiology Fri, 04 Oct 2024 08:47:14 EDT news647250372 Pockets of microbes have been found living within a sealed fracture in a 2-billion-year-old rock. The rock was excavated from the Bushveld Igneous Complex in South Africa, an area known for its rich ore deposits. This is the oldest example of living microbes being found within ancient rock so far discovered. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-billion-year-early-life-earth.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Thu, 03 Oct 2024 12:23:05 EDT news647176974 What took so long for humans to appear on Earth? The Earth is 4.6 billion years old, and life began about 4 billion years ago, yet humans—the only intelligent, technological species we know of in the universe—have existed only for the last 200,000 years. Why didn't we come sooner? What factor(s) delayed our appearance? And what can life's timeline here say about the possibility of other technologically advanced lifeforms in the universe? https://phys.org/news/2024-09-hard-evolutionary-history-human-intelligence.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Wed, 25 Sep 2024 10:00:01 EDT news646476180 One way to understand the potential for life on far-off planets—those in other solar systems that orbit different stars—is to study a planet's atmosphere. Telescopic images often capture traces of gases that may indicate life and habitable planets. But findings from a new study led by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder challenge this idea: Scientists have created one type of gas often seen as an indicator of life in a chemistry lab with no organisms present. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-potential-indicators-life-planets-lab.html Astrobiology Mon, 23 Sep 2024 16:58:03 EDT news646329481 By staring into the hellish landscape of Jupiter's moon Io—the most volcanically active location in the solar system—Cornell astronomers have been able to study a fundamental process in planetary formation and evolution: tidal heating. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-volcanoes-reveal-interior-jupiter-moon.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Thu, 19 Sep 2024 12:28:03 EDT news645967681 Although Mars is currently a cold, dry planet, geological evidence suggests that liquid water existed there around 3 to 4 billion years ago. Where there is water, there is usually life. In their quest to answer the burning question about life on Mars, researchers at Tohoku University created a detailed model of organic matter production in the ancient Martian atmosphere. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-mars-atmospheric-formaldehyde.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Thu, 19 Sep 2024 09:55:18 EDT news645958514 Thus far, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has used strategies based on classical science—listening for radio waves, telescopes watching for optical signals, telescopes in orbit scouring light from the atmospheres of exoplanets, scanning for laser light that might come from aliens. Could a quantum mechanical approach do better? https://phys.org/news/2024-09-interstellar-quantum-communications-involve-earth.html Astrobiology Thu, 19 Sep 2024 09:15:54 EDT news645956146 Mold can survive the harshest of environments, so to stop harmful spores from growing on future space stations, a new study suggests a novel way to prevent its spread. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-mold-future-space-stations.html Space Exploration Astrobiology Wed, 11 Sep 2024 13:02:48 EDT news645278563 The SETI Institute, the Berkeley SETI Research Center and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research announced a study using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Western Australia. Led by Dr. Chenoa Tremblay of the SETI Institute and Prof. Steven Tingay of Curtin University, this research is the first to search for signs of alien technology in galaxies beyond our own, focusing on low radio frequencies (100 MHz). https://phys.org/news/2024-08-frequency-alien-technology-distant-galaxies.html Astrobiology Mon, 26 Aug 2024 15:27:03 EDT news643904822 Enrico Fermi's lunchtime question at wartime Los Alamos, "Where is everybody?" has been both a gift and a problem to scientists ever since. Known as "Fermi's Paradox," it simply asks, why, since life on Earth is ubiquitous and developed very early in Earth's history, and the galaxy is very old and not overly large, aren't there intelligent, advanced extraterrestrials everywhere? In particular, why can't we detect any, and why haven't any (obvious) aliens visited us? https://phys.org/news/2024-08-alien-life.html Astrobiology Mon, 26 Aug 2024 10:10:02 EDT news643885427 Florida Tech astrobiologist Manasvi Lingam has asked life's biggest questions from a young age. Though he can't recall his exact queries, he says his interests were perfectly consistent with those of other children: dinosaurs and aliens. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-astrobiologist-explores-likelihood-life-earth.html Astrobiology Fri, 23 Aug 2024 09:53:04 EDT news643625581 We know that the Earth has an iron core surrounded by a mantle of silicate bedrock and water (oceans) on its surface. Science has used this simple planet model until today for investigating exoplanets—planets that orbit another star outside our solar system. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-exoplanets-previously-thought.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Tue, 20 Aug 2024 05:00:01 EDT news643297202 Over the course of nearly five months in 2022, NASA's Perseverance rover collected rock samples from Mars that could rewrite the history of water on the red planet and even contain evidence for past life on Mars. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-mars-key-life-planet-urge.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Wed, 14 Aug 2024 09:00:02 EDT news642780302 Using seismic activity to probe the interior of Mars, geophysicists have found evidence for a large underground reservoir of liquid water—enough to fill oceans on the planet's surface. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-scientists-oceans-mars-deep.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Mon, 12 Aug 2024 15:00:01 EDT news642670823 Are there any advanced alien civilizations elsewhere in our galaxy? We don't know. All we do know is that there is at least one. Should we be optimistic or pessimistic about finding others? https://phys.org/news/2024-08-dim-odds-alien-civilizations.html Astrobiology Mon, 12 Aug 2024 09:50:28 EDT news642675019 One of NASA's key priorities is understanding the potential for life elsewhere in the universe. NASA has not found any credible evidence of extraterrestrial life—but NASA is exploring the solar system and beyond to help us answer fundamental questions, including whether we are alone in the universe. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-scientists-discuss-solar-panel-technosignatures.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Fri, 02 Aug 2024 15:16:18 EDT news641830481 A large team of chemists at Harvard University has found evidence suggesting that cloud-to-ground lightning strikes may have helped generate some of the building blocks needed for life on Earth to arise. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-cloud-ground-lightning-generated-blocks.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Tue, 30 Jul 2024 10:00:01 EDT news641552266 A vein-filled rock is catching the eye of the science team of NASA's Perseverance rover. Nicknamed "Cheyava Falls" by the team, the arrowhead-shaped rock contains fascinating traits that may bear on the question of whether Mars was home to microscopic life in the distant past. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-perseverance-rover-potential-ancient-life.html Astrobiology Planetary Sciences Thu, 25 Jul 2024 15:30:49 EDT news641140242