The best places to look for alien life: Scientists identify 45 Earth-like worlds to explore for a 'Project Hail Mary'
If we're to find extraterrestrial life in the universe, astronomers have pinpointed the best places to look for it. They have identified just under 50 rocky worlds most likely to be habitable out of the more than 6,000 exoplanets discovered so far.
New study complicates the search for alien oxygen
Oxygen has been the most important gas in our search for life among the cosmos thus far. On Earth, we have it in abundance because it is produced by biological synthesis. But that might not be the case on other planets, so even if we do find a very clear high oxygen signal in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, it might not be a clear indication that life exists there. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, by Margaret Turcotte Seavey and a team of researchers from institutions like the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Johns Hopkins University, adds some additional context to what else might be going on in those atmospheres. In particular, they note that if there's even a little bit of water vapor, it can make a big difference in whether a lifeless rock looks like a living, thriving world.
Astronomers discover a new type of planet that probably smells like rotten eggs
"What other types of planets are waiting to be uncovered?"
Origin of lowest density super-puff planet remains a hazy mystery
A thick layer of haze around the ultra-low-density planet Kepler-51d likely obscures not only the strange planet's composition, but also its origin, according to a new study. A team led by Penn State researchers used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to take a deeper look at the "super-puff" planet that defies planetary formation models. However, the thickest layer of haze found on a planet yet makes discerning the chemical elements in the planet's atmosphere—and any clues to the planet's formation—challenging.
A new class of molten planet stores abundant sulfur in a perpetual magma ocean
A study led by the University of Oxford has identified a new type of planet beyond our solar system—one that stores large amounts of sulfur deep within a permanent ocean of magma. The findings have been published in Nature Astronomy.
Life, But Not As We Know It
For sixty years, the search for life beyond Earth has been built on the single assumption that alien life will look enough like us to recognise. A radical new idea called Assembly Theory is challenging that assumption. A team from the Arizona State University has proposed applying it to the atmospheres of distant exoplanets, not to look for specific gases, but to measure how much complexity a planetary atmosphere contains, and whether blind chemistry alone could plausibly have produced it. If it works, it could transform the way humanity searches for life among the stars, and redefine what we are even searching for.
This Isn't Just Another Rocky World Orbiting a Red Dwarf. This One's Special
Rocky planets are found in abundance around M-type stars (red dwarfs), so finding another one doesn't always generate headlines. But an international team of astronomers say that one recent M-dwarf rocky planet found by TESS is especially noteworthy. This one can serve as a benchmark for comparative studies of this type of exoplanet and their at-risk atmospheres.
NASA's tiny spacecraft sends first exoplanet images
With the first images from the spacecraft now in hand, the team behind NASA's Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat, or SPARCS, is ready to begin charting the energetic lives of the galaxy's most common stars to help answer one of humanity's most profound questions: Which distant worlds beyond our solar system might be habitable?
"Ionic Liquids" Could Redefine the Habitable Zone
“Follow the water” has been a guiding mantra of astrobiology, and even space exploration more generally for decades. If you want to find life, it makes sense to look for the universal solvent that almost all types of life on Earth use. But what if life doesn’t actually need water to live or even evolve? A recent paper, available in pre-print on arXiv by researchers at MIT, including Dr. Sara Seager, and the University of Cardiff, proposes an alternative to water as the basis for life - ionic liquids (ILs) and deep eutectic solvents (DES). These liquids could allow life to exist in environments we had once thought were far too hot, too cold, or too barren to support life, and could dramatically change our search for it throughout the cosmos.
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