Extraterrestrial life
Could Earth be in quarantine from space aliens?
Avi Loeb at Scientific American on the importance of reproducibility in science
NASA stresses naturalist origin of life to kids
Would specified complexity help us find extraterrestrial intelligences?
One theory about why we don’t see extraterrestrials provides support for Earth as a privileged planet
Astrophysicist: If there really are extraterrestrials, what difference would it make?
Ethan Siegel tells us why he thinks colonizing super-Earths would end in disaster
Does the habitability of exoplanets depend on nitrogen?
It plays an unexpected role in planetary temperature, researchers found: While most research about the habitable zone has focused on a star’s brightness (as temperature dictates whether water on a planet could be liquid, ice or gas), new research is showing that this is an extremely simplified and naive picture. The true test for whether or not a planet could host life may, in fact, rest in the most boring of gases: nitrogen… The researchers behind the simulations in this new study found that nitrogen plays a huge role in determining the overall temperature of a planet — and, therefore, its habitability. What’s even more complicated: it’s not a simple relationship, more nitrogen doesn’t necessarily just make a planet warmer. Read More ›