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DailyDirt: Life Across The Universe

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Astrobiology is a field that doesn’t have a whole lot of experimental evidence, but it’s interesting to entertain the possibilities of life that might exist elsewhere in the universe. So far, we’ve been looking for ET biology that’s similar to our own, but there’s nothing that says biology must be based on DNA/RNA/proteins/etc. Here are just a few more links on possibly finding life on other worlds.

• Stars in our galaxy generally travel only a few hundred miles per second relative to their peers, but some hypervelocity stars traveling at hundreds of thousands of miles per second might escape our galaxy — and spread life across the universe. It could happen theoretically, but no one has yet observed this phenomenon directly. [url]
• Data from the Kepler mission suggests possibly-habitable planets exist near a significant fraction of all stars — providing better estimates for values in the Drake equation. However, we’re still probably very far away from our nearest neighbors (if they even exist). [url]
• How tough is DNA? Tough enough to survive on the outside of a rocket going to space and also re-entry from orbit. Presumably, this also means that it’s not impossible for ET DNA to arrive on the tons of meteorites that hit our planet every day.[url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: alien, astrobiology, dna, drake equation, et, exoplanet, extraterrestrial, habitable, kepler, life

DailyDirt: Life On Other Planets

We’ve discovered thousands of exoplanets beyond our solar system, and some of them are even in the “Goldilocks zone” where liquid water could possibly exist. Some astronomers think life could be abundant in the universe, but there’s not that much hard evidence (yet!). Here are just a few astronomical discoveries that might encourage researchers to look for signs of life a bit more carefully.

• Exoplanets have been discovered circling some extremely old, metal-poor stars, creating interesting curiosities that might expand the theories of how planets form. These exoplanets might not harbor any kind of life… or we may want to get a bit more creative about how we envision life on other worlds. [url]
• A free-floating planet named CFBDSIR2149 is not orbiting a star, and it’s only one of about two dozen or so known examples of a starless planet. This rogue planet is relatively young compared to the Earth, and some spectroscopic measurements suggest this planet’s temperature is about 430° Celsius — a bit too warm for our tastes (but maybe not for aliens?). [url]
• Within our own solar system, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has detected spurts of water from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. This evidence leads to some speculation of a habitable zone on some icy moons where microbes might be able to survive. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: alien, astrobiology, astronomy, biology, cfbdsir2149, enceladus, et, exoplanets, extraterrestrial, life
Companies: nasa