Category: Astrobiology

What Could Have Created the Ancient Martian Rivers? Researchers created a new model for climate cycling on early Mars, aiming to explain the soil patterns that have been observed on the planet.

Sciworthy Staff

by Larissa L. Cavalcante Blue Marble Space Young Scientist Program Water is essential for life. When searching for life in the universe, the first thing researchers do is “follow the water”. Mars is no exception. Finding evidence of water on Mars READ MORE

Why is the Sun Yellow? Red dwarf stars are much more common, so are we a fluke?

Jacob Haqq-Misra

Jacob Haqq-Misra, Ravi Kopparapu, and Eric Wolf attempt to address this question in a recent paper titled “Why do we find ourselves around a yellow star instead of a red star?” and published in International Journal of Astrobiology.

The Information Flow of Life Our genes are the software and our traits are the hardware, one pushing the development of the other.

Mohit Nalavadi

From chemistry to biology to social networks, specific shared principles should guide how information is organized and how it cycles through these stacks. If this theory of common principles can be demonstrated, we would gain a deeper understanding of the flow of information through life.

Mysterious, Unusual Intergalactic Radio Signal Found Astronomers find the location of an unusual radio pulse to be outside our galaxy and are currently unable to determine the source.

Crystal Riley

Radio astronomers working with a radio dish telescope detected something a bit unusual. They were seeing a very fast radio burst, faster and more irregular than any signal in the history of radio astronomy. This radio burst was coming at very short time scales, lasting just a few milliseconds. The signal was irregular, very fast, and strong. This rapid burst has been something of a mystery since it was first discovered.

Saturn’s Moon Enceladus May Have Conditions For Life In a last scientific hurrah, the Cassini spacecraft has detected that hydrogen is being ejected from the moon’s ice-covered ocean

Sanjoy Som

In a last scientific hurrah, the Cassini spacecraft has detected that hydrogen is being ejected from the moon’s ice-covered ocean.

Betting on Aliens Would you invest in the search for extraterrestrials for a chance to win big?

Jacob Haqq-Misra

If intelligent aliens exist somewhere in the depths of space, then should we see signs of their technology? This question has motivated scientists involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) to hunt for evidence of tell-tale signs of alien READ MORE

What Does it Mean to Be Alive? Maybe the underlying principle of life is neither cells nor metabolism, but the sharing of information.

Sciworthy Staff

by Rodrigo Abans Blue Marble Space Young Scientist Program You are on one of those trips where the travel is so tedious that even your cell phone looks boring. Not being able to sleep, you look out the window to READ MORE

Water found outside of the solar system A planet around a distant star shows us it has water on it by the light it gives off.

Crystal Riley

51 Pegasi b is a roughly jupiter-sized planet around a star pretty similar to our sun. This planet has been part of astronomy conversations before, as it is a huge planet with a really small orbit; this planet orbits around READ MORE

The Age and Fate of the Orion Nebular Cloud The initial mass function may have given us the age of Orion, but it still doesn't tell the whole story...

Crystal Riley

Stars and planets are most often categorized by their mass. In astronomy, the “initial mass function” is used for this categorization. The initial mass function catalogues the number of planets and stars of a certain mass, and creates a diagram READ MORE