There is a new possibility for life on Titan. Scientists affiliated with Cornell University have created a blueprint for a cellular lifeform that wouldn’t need water to survive. Water on Earth has been the principal ingredient of, as well as the catalyst for, the formation of life. The Cornell scientists believe water could be replaced by […]
Hardy DNA could mean we're aliens
A team of European scientists have shown that DNA molecules can withstand the rough temperatures and pressures that rockets experience when they reenter Earth’s atmosphere from space. Their finding is important from the perspective of meteorites and other space rocks that crash on Earth. Many scientists think such objects could once have seeded our planet […]
Hardy DNA could mean we’re aliens
A team of European scientists have shown that DNA molecules can withstand the rough temperatures and pressures that rockets experience when they reenter Earth’s atmosphere from space. Their finding is important from the perspective of meteorites and other space rocks that crash on Earth. Many scientists think such objects could once have seeded our planet […]
How Venus could harbor life: supercritical carbon dioxide
A new study published in the online journal Life says a hotter, pressurized form of carbon dioxide could harbor life in a similar way water does on Earth. This is an interesting find, theoretical though it is, because it might obviate the need for water to be present for life to exist on other planets. In fact, of […]
NASA announces Mars 2020 rover payload
On July 31, NASA announced the roster of instruments that would hitch a ride on board its planned rover to the red planet in 2020. John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Headquarters, Washington, said the instruments would extend the search for life in Mars’s past, conduct geological and environmental […]
What life on Earth tells us about life ‘elsewhere’
In 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi asked a question not many could forget for a long time: “Where is everybody?” He was referring to the notion that, given the age and size of the universe, advanced civilizations ought to have arisen in many parts of it. But if they had, then where are their space probes and […]