Rock samples collected from Mars by NASA’s Curiosity rover have revealed signs of key ingredients of life, according to a statement by the agency.
Extraterrestrial life
From Science News: No signs (yet) of life on Venus
University of Cambridge researchers conclude, “The unusual behavior of sulphur in Venus’ atmosphere cannot be explained by an ‘aerial’ form of extra-terrestrial life, according to a new study.”
At Phys.org: NASA gets serious about UFOs
NASA is officially joining the hunt for UFOs. The space agency on Thursday announced a new study that will recruit leading scientists to examine unidentified aerial phenomena.
At Reasons to Believe: Could Life Be Silicon-Based?
Biochemist Fuz Rana discusses a 2020 review article published in the journal Life in which a team of astrobiologists from MIT present a detailed evaluation of silicon’s life-support capacity.
At Big Think: 5 ways the James Webb Space Telescope could change science forever
Ethan Siegel: Thanks to its unique, unprecedented capabilities, JWST might answer five currently open questions about the Universe in very surprising ways.
At Mind Matters News: Earth’s weirdest life forms show that ET life is possible
Many life forms eat and breathe things we used to think were lethal. Life seems to want to come into existence any way it can. Exoplanets may well offer suitable environments.
At Nature: NASA’s Perseverance rover begins key search for life on Mars
Witze: More than fifteen months after landing in Jezero Crater on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover has finally begun its hunt for ancient life in earnest.
At Mind Matters News: Why scientists think there might be life on Europa
An intelligent design approach to the universe is a better bet for finding life elsewhere than Darwinian randomness is.
At Mind Matters News: Among 5000 known exoplanets, there are some really strange ones
To sum up, whatever we see or read about planets in science fiction, something out there is likely stranger still. It will be most interesting to see how many of the more conventional exoplanets have life and if there is in fact a reliable formula for predicting it. Those who claim that Earth is just an ordinary planet are certainly wrong — but is Earth unique? The universe is fine-tuned, as is Earth, and that would be an argument for life on exoplanets.
Given the newly discovered favorable signs, what if Europa is NOT inhabited?
Researcher: “If the mechanism we see in Greenland is how these things happen on Europa, it suggests there’s water everywhere.”
At Mind Matters News: A purpose must underlie the universe if intelligent beings exist
His reasons would suggest that human intelligence cannot simply be a product of evolution, whether he realizes that or not.
Who but C.S. Lewis to unmask the pretensions of SETI…
C. .S. Lewis: The Supernatural is not remote and abstruse: it is a matter of daily and hourly experience, as intimate as breathing.”
At Mind Matters News: NASA develops a scale for assessing the chances of ET life
The idea is to give media some idea of the level of confidence in what the apparent signal might be telling us — biological activity or just chemistry?
At Mind Matters News: Why researchers focus on possible life on Venus
Takehome: Extremophiles — life forms that live under extreme conditions — are showing that survival of life is a much less severe problem than origin of life.
Paper at PNAS challenges universal common descent
The underlying issue may well be this: With the James Webb Space Telescope headed off to survey countless exoplanets, astrobiology (search for extraterrestrial life) is becoming cool. A strict neo-Darwinian approach, as in “All life unearth arose from a single cell” is, at best, inconvenient. At worst, a true bummer. The astrobiologist is going to be much happier with “prime candidates for developing new theory on the ‘laws of life’ that might apply to all possible biochemistries…” Life lesson: Researchers will sacrifice Darwinism pretty quickly when it is an actual impediment.