Tag: Search for Life

Life after stellar death? How life could arise on planets orbiting white dwarfs

NeRD

Planets could survive the death of their star and become capable of supporting life — and now astronomers are going to go hunting for them. Stars do not survive forever, the sun included. In about five billion years, Earth’s star will begin to exhaust its supply of hydrogen used to generate energy via nuclear fusion in its core. The sun’s core will then begin to contract, increasing the temperature so that hydrogen in its outer envelope can then ignite fusion reactions that will cause the sun — and other stars…

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Could alien life be hiding in the rings of Saturn or Jupiter?

NeRD

The search for life beyond Earth has driven seekers to scout all sorts of potential habitats — not just on the growing list of known Earth-like exoplanets, but in other places within our own solar system.  The first choice that comes to mind is likely Mars, which some scientists believe still holds oases of liquid water beneath its barren surface, Not long ago, the detection of phosphine, a possible indicator of biological decay, in the atmosphere of Venus set off debate about whether life could exist in that hellishly hot…

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Saturn’s ocean moon Enceladus is able to support life − my research team is working out how to detect extraterrestrial cells there

NeRD

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Fabian Klenner is a planetary scientist and astrobiologist at the University of Washington (UW). His research focus lies on the exploration of icy moons in the solar system, in particular Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa. Saturn has 146 confirmed moons – more than any other planet in the solar system – but one called Enceladus stands out. It appears to have the ingredients for life. From 2004 to 2017, Cassini –…

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Which telescope will be 1st to find alien life? Scientists have some ideas

NeRD

A peek into the future of exoplanet science suggests the forthcoming European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is going to give us our best chance in the next two decades of detecting biosignatures on nearby rocky worlds orbiting other stars. Such is the conclusion of a new study that simulated what it will take to characterize worlds outside our solar system with the tantalizing prospect of hosting life, such as Proxima Centauri b.  This study will allow astronomers to set their sights on key exoplanetary targets during the 2030s and beyond.…

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1st ‘interstellar tourism campaign’ urges aliens to visit Lexington, Kentucky

NeRD

Hey, aliens! Lexington, Kentucky would be a good place to spend your next deep-space vacation. This was the message that a group of Kentucky scientists, linguists and scholars recently beamed at the TRAPPIST-1 system, which lies 40 light-years from Earth and harbors multiple potentially habitable planets. The missive represented the very first interstellar travel advertisement, according to VisitLEX, the group behind the effort. Related: The search for alien life VisitLEX’s tourism team at the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau partnered with the Cornett ad agency to devise a playful campaign…

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Life beyond Earth may form in the coldest depths of space, Ryugu asteroid samples reveal

NeRD

In 2020, the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 visited the asteroid Ryugu and managed to bring precious samples of the space rock back to Earth. And sure enough, years later, we are still gaining insights about this small asteroid and the environment in which it formed thanks to those samples. Today, scientists released the latest findings from Ryugu — that certain organic compounds called PAHs may be able to form in cold areas in space.  These results may help us to better understand how planet formation, and eventually life, came to be.…

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Some UFO records must be released, US Congress says

NeRD

The United States Congress just passed legislation that directs the U.S. government to release records related to UFOs. Some UFO records, anyway. According to new provisions in the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, the law that funds the U.S. military and related activities, the U.S. National Archives must collect for release all documents that “pertain to unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin, and non-human intelligence.”  None of those terms is defined in the bill, however. “Unidentified anomalous phenomena,” or UAP, is a relatively a newly adopted and…

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