Tag: Astrobiology
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NASA says pictures from Hubble reveal ‘surprising’ hints of Europa’s hidden ocean
An image from NASA’s Galileo orbiter shows Europa’s icy surface, crisscrossed by reddish-brown streaks of radiation-darkened salt. (Credit: NASA / JPL / Ted Stryk) NASA is gearing up to unveil “surprising evidence” of activity that may be related to the presence of a watery ocean beneath the icy surface of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons.…
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Proxima’s progress: Why it’ll take years to learn what closest exoplanet is really like
An artist’s conception shows a view of the surface of the planet Proxima b, with the red dwarf Proxima Centauri near the horizon. (Credi:t: M. Kornmesser / ESO) University of Washington astronomer Rory Barnes says Proxima Centauri b is the biggest discovery in 20 years for planet hunters like himself, but it could take another 20…
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One of NASA’s cleanest spacecraft ever is ready to fly
A member of the OSIRIS-REx team prepares the spacecraft for launch Sept. 8. The Atlas 5 rocket’s payload fairing is in the background. Credit: Ben Cooper/Launchphotography.com Five years after winning $1 billion from NASA to mount the first U.S. asteroid sample return mission, scientists and engineers will get their last look at the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft…
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40 years since Viking, scientists still on the hunt for life on Mars
NASA’s Viking 1 lander captured this image of its landing site at Chryse Planitia at sunset in August 1976. Credit: NASA/JPL Four decades after NASA’s Viking landers acquired humanity’s first view of the surface of Mars, a planet whose reality lived in the imaginations of skywatchers for millennia, a definitive smoking gun for microbial life…
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Have any alien civilizations ever existed? Astronomers say the chances are sky-high
Ellie Arroway (played by Jodie Foster) listens for alien signals in the movie “Contact.” (Credit: Warner Bros.) Are we alone? Fifty-five years ago, astronomer Frank Drake came up with an equation that weighed the odds for aliens, and now two astronomers have tweaked the formula to come up with a slightly different spin. Their bottom…
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Mega-tsunamis on Mars? Sediments show signs of giant waves from ancient ocean
This artist’s impression shows Mars as it might have looked 4 billion years ago, with the complex shoreline of Chryse Planitia front and center. (Credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO) Liquid water is almost non-existent on modern Mars, but scientists say sedimentary deposits show signs that tsunami waves as high as 400 feet washed over Martian shorelines…
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1,284 new worlds! Kepler mission doubles its tally of planets in one fell swoop
A graphic shows the diversity of planets. (Credit: NASA) The scientists behind NASA’s Kepler mission are using statistics to put their campaign to identify new planets into overdrive: New software that automates the process has verified 1,284 candidates as genuine planets rather than celestial “impostors,” more than doubling its database of confirmed worlds. “This is the…
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SETI Institute launches radio search for alien life amid 20,000 red dwarf stars
An artist’s conception shows a planetary system around a red dwarf star. (Credit: ESO) The SETI Institute is shifting the focus of its search for extraterrestrial intelligence to places that could harbor life that’s not as we know it: 20,000 red-dwarf star systems. “Red dwarfs – the dim bulbs of the cosmos – have received scant attention…
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Why haven’t we found aliens? Here’s the bad news, and the good news
SETI pioneer Jill Tarter pays a visit to the Allen Telescope Array in California, one of the prime sites for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. (Credit: SETI Institute) It’s a question that goes back decades: If other civilizations have arisen beyond Earth over the course of billions of years, why haven’t we heard from them?…
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‘Alien megastructure’ update: SETI telescope detects no sign of E.T., but search goes on
The Allen Telescope Array looks for alien radio signals. (Credit: Seth Shostak / SETI Institute) The SETI Institute says it hasn’t detected any alien radio signals coming from a star whose light seems to be dimming in a weird way, but it’s too early to determine what kind of phenomenon is behind the pattern. The star,…