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Tag Archives: astrobiology
Surprises from simulating Titan’s atmosphere
“That can’t be right.” These are terrible or wonderful words for a scientist. It’s that moment when they look at the results of an experiment and see something they truly did not expect, good or bad. It happened to Sarah Hörst, graduate student and lead researcher on a project for the University of Arizona (Tucson, [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged amino acid, atmosphere, exogenous life, nucleotide, prebiotic, Saturn, simulation, Titan Leave a comment
Life on Titan through a hydrocarbon haze
The hazy methane-red surface of Titan. NASA/JPL Even before the wildly successful Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and its lunar neighborhood, scientists have looked at the largest moon, Titan, studied it with telescopes and other instruments, noted its methane-rich atmosphere, its extreme cold (around 90 degrees Kelvin, -183C or -290F), and wondered if somehow in its [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged acetylene, Cassini, Huygens, hydrogen, methane-based life, NASA, organic chemistry, Saturn, Titan Leave a comment
Life under an Antarctic glacier
Suppose you’re standing on a glacier in Antarctica, twelve miles (19 km) from the sea, and you drill a hole in the ice to get a core sample. Down about 600 feet (180 meters), you hit a little bit of water, and you think, “It’s unfrozen water. Could be something living in this – a [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged Antarctica, Enceladus, Europa, extremophiles, glacier, life, NASA Leave a comment
Life on Mars, if it exists, is below the surface
Is there life on Mars? We don’t know yet. If there is, it isn’t very big. In fact, if there’s (still) any life at all, it will be bacteria or something even more primitive and small. Whatever there is, it’s also not likely to be on the surface. That’s not because of the cold; it’s [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged bacteria, DNA, environment, extremophiles, LUCA, Mars, microbes, panspermia, UV 1 Comment
Martian lakes may have lingered – life more likely
Over the past decade (roughly) as more visual and on-site evidence has been gathered, it’s become accepted that Mars had a ‘water era,’ a time when liquid water was relatively common on the surface of the planet. Liquid water is now long-gone from the surface and what didn’t escape into the atmosphere is now trapped [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged astrogeology, exobiology, exogenous life, Mars, Mars lakes, Mars water Leave a comment
Mars water: What’s all the fuss?