Researchers: Exoplanets around stars with a higher carbon to oxygen ratio than our sun are more likely to be carbon-rich. They hypothesize that these carbon-rich exoplanets could convert to diamond and silicate, if water (which is abundant in the universe) were present, creating a diamond-rich composition.
Extraterrestrial life
Claim: Possible hints of life on Venus
A friend notes that, to judge from the Abstract, the way they reasoned the matter sounds like design theorist William Dembski’s explanatory filter.
Big money powers the hunt for alien intelligence
Okay, billionaires can spend their money as they like; that’s part of being a billionaire. But now, question: If they still don’t find anything out there, can any conclusions be drawn?
Ten million star systems: No alien tech
A researcher says that that’s because “space is really, really big”. Space is not as big as the human imagination though.
At Retraction Watch: “Transparently absurd” paper at Elsevier
Retraction Watch: Erm, about that concerning peer review process. Elsevier also was the publisher of the equally risible book chapter claiming that COVID-19 came to earth on a meteorite.
Researchers: The space aliens are indeed Out There! But they’re “lyfe,” not life
From The Guardian: The two researchers say there are “sublyfe” systems that only meet some of these criteria, and also perhaps “superlyfe” that meets additional ones: lyfe forms that have capabilities beyond ours and that might look on us as we do on complex but non-living processes such as crystal growth.
Why the space aliens have never shown up? Seven reasons offered
4. It makes the most sense for the aliens to have become artificial intelligences, say many theorists,
Physicists: Life forms could flourish in the interior of stars
This would seem to be string theory’s contribution to biology: At a time when we haven’t yet located fossil bacteria on Mars (of which there is at least a plausible hope), we are asked to accept that there might be formations within stars that we would not identify as life but really are. String theory is then about as fruitful in biology as it is in cosmology.
UFO spotting replaces bird watching in pandemic
The aliens are, of course, sending those people holograms only, due to COVID-19 restrictions. But, as always, they’re out there if you believe they are. 😉
Could bacteria have survived a trip from Earth to Mars?
Some see this as evidence that the universe is teeming with life on numberless planets. But what if we find fossil bacteria on Mars with genetics eerily similar to the ones we have on Earth? That could end up undermining such claims. But we shall see.
Yet another reason the space aliens are not here
Their evil robots killed them: = The Berserker Hypothesis: “There have been a number of variations on this argument, such as cosmologist Edward Harrison. In 1981, he argued that an advanced species that has overcome its own self-destructive tendencies might be motivated to create Berserker probes out of a sense of self-preservation.”
Harvard astronomer still thinks space cigarillo Oumuamua might be “alien tech”
Skepticism makes no headway here so it must in fact be a sort of naturalist religious cult.
Ethan Siegel enumerates what we might find, re life on Mars
Siegel: It’s the ultimate nightmare of astrobiologists: that there’s a fascinating history of life to uncover on another world, but we’ll contaminate it with our own organisms before we ever learn the true history of life on that world.
Claim: A surprising number of exoplanets could host life
Oh for a single, solitary fossil bacterium on Mars, to make this discussion sound real…
Perseverance Rover, whatever befalls it, is real science
Speculations about space aliens isn’t. It may take a while to find out if there was ever life on Mars but maybe we’ll really know something this time.