Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Category

Extraterrestrial life

At Phys.org: Planetary interiors in TRAPPIST-1 system could be affected by solar flares

It's worth realizing that if the energy from stellar flaring is sufficient to noticeably heat the entire planet, it's more than enough to "cook its goose." Read More ›

At The Debrief: The Case for Alien Life Elevated By the Exciting First-Ever Confirmation of Two Exoplanet Water Worlds

Bold claim: "However, given that water is the fundamental building block for all life as we know it, the exciting first-ever confirmation of two exoplanet water worlds still dramatically increases the likelihood that alien life exists in the universe. " Read More ›

At SciTech Daily: Traces of Ancient Ocean Discovered on Mars – This Means a “Higher Potential for Life”

“A major goal for the Mars Curiosity rover missions is to look for signs of life,” Cardenas said. “It’s always been looking for water, for traces of habitable life. This is the biggest one yet. It’s a giant body of water, fed by sediments coming from the highlands, presumably carrying nutrients." Read More ›

At Phys.org: NASA announces 16 people who will study UFOs to see what’s natural—and what isn’t

What would the UFO team decide if they were fed the genetic code from human DNA, perhaps disguised in a format that didn't reveal it as such? Read More ›

At Earth Sky: How likely is an Earth-like origin of life elsewhere?

Paul Scott Anderson writes: We know that life originated on Earth some 3.7 billion years ago. But we still don’t understand exactly how life came to be. Likewise, we know little to nothing about life on other rocky worlds, even those that might be similar to Earth. Is life a rare occurrence, or is it common? Or somewhere in between? Scientists debate the subject of abiogenesis, the idea of life arising from non-living material. If it can happen on Earth, can it happen elsewhere, too? A new paper from retired astrophysicist Daniel Whitmire at the University of Arkansas argues that it can. Whitmire published his new peer-reviewed paper in the International Journal of Astrobiology on September 23, 2022. Abiogenesis and our own existence Basically, the paper is a counter-argument to the view held Read More ›

At Astronomy Now: Frank Drake, SETI pioneer, 1930–2022

Frank Drake, the radio astronomer who pioneered the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), died yesterday (2 September) at the age of 92. Born on 28 May 1930 in Chicago, Drake was working at the Green Bank Radio Telescope during the early days of radio astronomy, in the late 1950s, when he was inspired by Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison’s famous 1959 paper in Nature about using radio transmissions at 21cm wavelength to communicate across interstellar distances. Encouraged by the director of Green Bank, Otto Struve, Drake conducted the first ever radio SETI search in April 1960. Called Project Ozma, the search utilised the 26-metre dish at Green Bank to scan two nearby stars, epsilon Eridani and tau Ceti, for extraterrestrial Read More ›

At Mind Matters News: News from the search for extraterrestrial life 2

One reason for hope for finding life elsewhere in the universe is that the universe appears to be fine-tuned for life. What the universe won’t do is tell us where the life is. Read More ›

At Phys.org: Underwater snow gives clues about Europa’s icy shell

Researchers: "When we're exploring Europa, we're interested in the salinity and composition of the ocean, because that's one of the things that will govern its potential habitability or even the type of life that might live there." Read More ›