Extraterrestrial life

Dashing hopes of potential habitable environments? From ScienceDaily: Mars’s gullies may be formed by dry ice processes rather than flowing liquid water, as previously thought. This is the conclusion of a study conducted by two French scientists published online on December 21st in Nature Geoscience. They show that, during late winter and spring, underneath the seasonal CO2 ice layer heated by the sun, intense gas fluxes can destabilize the regolith material and induce gas-lubricated debris flows which look like water-sculpted gullies on Earth. The model created by the two French scientists can also explain why Mars’s gullies are located mostly in the 30̊-60̊ latitude range -with a few spots at higher latitudes- and why most gullies are found on poleward Read More ›

The Mars colony should be independent why? Bloody wars have been fought over this kind of thing so we must consider. Further to “Hoping to find remains of ancient life on Mars,” we hear from BBC, The idea is simple. Instead of having the humans who land and live on Mars answer back to their home planet’s companies and institutions, they should be given total independence. To ensure this independence, Haqq-Misra outlines five provisions of liberation. Humans who land on Mars relinquish their Earthly citizenship. They are Martians now, not Earthlings First, humans who land on Mars relinquish their Earthly citizenship. They are Martians now, not Earthlings. Second, governments, companies and people on Earth cannot interfere with the politics or Read More ›

So reports Ethan Siegel at Forbes: Yesterday, results were released from an international team led by Alexandre Santerne from Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, where they measured 129 objects-of-interest identified by Kepler for a period of five years. They did spectroscopic analysis, which means they studied the individual wavelengths of light coming from the star, and expected a false positive rate of about 10-to-20%, which is what most scientists estimated. But they found, instead, that over half (52%) of the planetary candidates were, in fact, eclipsing binaries, with another three candidates turning out to be brown dwarfs. … But perhaps the biggest surprise is that the majority of these thought-to-be planets aren’t planets at all, but are massive Read More ›

From Nature: What we know about alien worlds — and what’s coming next. The tally of known extrasolar planets now stands at 1,978, with nearly 4,700 more candidates waiting to be confirmed. On 29 November, exoplanet researchers will gather in Hawaii to review these extreme solar systems — and map out a path for the next two decades. Free infographic here. Here’s an interesting new find from May 2014: Goldilocks may not like exoplanets. Maybe that’s because of stuff like this? Radiation nixes most Earth-like planet for life? Researchers: Atmosphere of Kepler-438b would be stripped away. See also: Don’t let Mars fool you. Those exoplanets teem with life! Follow UD News at Twitter!

From Warwick U: The most Earth-like planet could have been made uninhabitable by vast quantities of radiation, new research led by the University of Warwick has found. The atmosphere of the planet, Kepler-438b, is thought to have been stripped away as a result of radiation emitted from a superflaring Red Dwarf star, Kepler-438. Regularly occurring every few hundred days, the superflares are approximately ten times more powerful than those ever recorded on the Sun and equivalent to the same energy as 100 billion megatons of TNT.More. The find raises a question about how we determine whether a planet is Earth-like. Most Earth-like planet uninhabitable due to radiation, new research suggests C/NET laments, Farewell to hope of life on Kepler-438b, adding Read More ›

From Smithsonian: Ancient volcanic rocks may have preserved tiny samples of the planet’s original moisture A new analysis in Science suggests that at least some of Earth’s current moisture derives from water-soaked dust particles trapped deep inside during the planet’s formation. … The ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in the universe was fixed shortly after the Big Bang. But various processes can alter that ratio in certain locations. On Earth, hydrogen can be stripped out of the atmosphere by the solar wind, and deuterium can be added through cometary impacts. More. In the most ancient rocks, researchers found some of the lowest ratios of deuterium to hydrogen ever recorded, suggesting that water was there from the beginning. From New Scientist: Read More ›

A friend wonders how SETI would know if a signal comes from an intelligent source. Can’t nature just produce intelligence via natural selection acting on random mutations? Well, don’t they use the same criteria for detecting intelligence as ID? From SETI@home, criteria such as narrow-band, pulsed radio patterns, that intelligent intention easily explains but natural causes would not: If our stellar friends are trying to put actual information on their signal (very likely), the signal will almost certainly be pulsed. We’ll be looking for this too. He also found us this, from Evolution News & Views, answering a reader’s query about “methodological naturalism”*: Epistemology — how we know — and ontology — what exists — are both affected by methodological Read More ›

Some people offer the 15 best reasons to think aliens are real. Others say, no. But it’s not even clear how we would recognize alien life. From Cosmos, Alan Finkel questions whether the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos is worth the effort. Let’s say there is an intelligent civilisation on Kepler-452b and that they have built a powerful transmitter to send signals to us. If we picked up such a signal today and responded, our signal would take 1,400 years to reach them. Their response would take just as long, so it would be our descendants 2,800 years from now who would receive the reply. That would make for a rather drawn-out conversation. Even if they did Read More ›

Rosetta’s most surprising discovery so far. From Phys.org: Stunned scientists announced Wednesday the unexpected discovery of large quantities of oxygen on a comet which streaked past the Sun in August with a European spacecraft in tow. The find came as a “big surprise”, and challenges mainstream theories on the formation of our Solar System, said scientist Andre Bieler of the University of Michigan. The oxygen is believed to be older than our solar system. As O2 mixes easily with other elements, “we never thought that oxygen could ‘survive’ for billions of years” in a pristine state, said Kathrin Altwegg of the University of Bern, who co-authored a study in the journal Nature. More. We are advised not to jump to Read More ›

From Business Insider: The 15 most compelling scientific findings that suggest aliens are real Beyond Europa is Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which scientists confirmed this month houses a giant, global ocean beneath its icy outer shell. Like Europa, Enceladus’ ocean is an ideal place where life beyond Earth could live. … The condos are going fast, we hear. Free central air. Aw shuddup. This is your own fault. You wouldn’t pay to download a good film and you are too lazy to scrummage around YouTube. Oh well, there is always this: But surely we can’t conjure an entire advanced civilization? and How do we grapple with the idea that ET might not be out there? to pick apart. See you tomorrow. Read More ›

From Yahoo News: In unexpected discovery, comet contains alcohol, sugar Scientists on Friday identified two complex organic molecules, or building blocks of life, on a comet for the first time, shedding new light on the cosmic origins of planets like Earth. Ethyl alcohol and a simple sugar known as glycolaldehyde were detected in Comet Lovejoy, said the study in the journal Science Advances. But while the latest study does not end the debate over whether falling comets indeed seeded Earth with the components necessary for life, it does add something to our knowledge, said study co-author Dominique Bockelée-Morvan, an astrophysicist at the French National Center for Scientific Research. More. The story doesn’t offer information as to why those elements might Read More ›

From Nautilus: Is Life Special Just Because It’s Rare? For centuries, we human beings have speculated on the possible existence and prevalence of life elsewhere in the universe. For the first time in history, we can begin to answer that profound question. At this point, the results of the Kepler mission can be extrapolated to suggest that something like 10 percent of all stars have a habitable planet in orbit. That fraction is large. With 100 billion stars just in our galaxy alone, and so many other galaxies out there, it is highly probable that there are many, many other solar systems with life. From this perspective, life in the cosmos is common. However, there’s another, grander perspective from which Read More ›

From Digg: Will we recognize alien life when we see it? However, one of his most interesting works is a slim book from 1944, based on a set of lectures Schrödinger gave in Dublin. It poses a single question: What is life? Good question. As it happens, we noted earlier, The definition of life has reached the point where science historian George Dyson tells us, “Life is whatever you define it to be.” Richard Dawkins has suggested it is “anything highly statistically improbable, but in a particular direction.” And at a year 2000 international “What is life?” conference, no two definitions were the same. Biochemist Edward Trifonov noted that there are 123 definitions available and, undeterred, promptly proposed his own: Read More ›

From National Geographic: It’s Official: Pluto Is Even Weirder Than We Thought Sure enough, that’s what the spacecraft found when it sped by the dwarf planet last July at more than 30,000 m.p.h.—a tortured, highly varied landscape that pointed to a living, geologically active world rather than an inert blob hovering at the frozen edge of the solar system. Even now, three months after New Horizons’ close encounter, scientists are just beginning to get a handle on what’s going on with Pluto and it’s large, equally intriguing moon Charon. But what they know already, laid out in a new paper in Science, is impressive—and deeply perplexing. Pluto appears to have been resurfaced (no craters) but That would only be possible Read More ›

Jupiter’s moon Europa has long been favoured as a possible site for life because of its underground oceans. This from Discovery.com If alien life swims in the ocean beneath Europa’s icy surface, it might have got its start from comets cracking the icy shell to deliver vital pre-life ingredients, say researchers. Imagine a geyser hundreds of kilometers high. Sound crazy? Well, on Jupiter’s moon they exist, and what these super geysers eject could give us invaluable insight into this unique, ice-covered planet. New simulations show that a specific family of comets have the mass, velocity and opportunity to do the job — penetrating the full range of likely Europan ice thicknesses. More. A comet getting through the ice depends on Read More ›