extraterrestrial – Techdirt (original) (raw)
Stories filed under: "extraterrestrial"
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]
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Filed Under: alien, astrobiology, dna, drake equation, et, exoplanet, extraterrestrial, habitable, kepler, life
DailyDirt: Nature Abhors A Vacuum
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Studies have shown that spore-forming bacteria can survive in space under certain conditions, so it doesn’t seem so implausible that life — as we know it — has accomplished interplanetary travel successfully. Extremophiles living in unexpected places also seems to suggest mounting evidence that life exists on other worlds, even though we have no direct proof of extraterrestrial beings (yet). Here are just a few links related to the growing field of astrobiology.
- NASA microbiologists have classified a new genus (not just a species) of bacteria that can survive in the clean rooms designed to prevent spacecraft from contaminating the rest of the solar system with terrestrial organisms. The bacterium Tersicoccus phoenicis was first found in 2007 in a clean room made for the Mars lander Phoenix, and it’s been seen again in another clean room 4,000 km away that housed the ESA’s Herschel space telescope. [url]
- When the universe was just 15 million years old, the ‘Goldilocks’ conditions for supporting life might have existed nearly everywhere — 10 billion years before life on Earth likely began. No one is actually certain if planets even existed when the universe was that young, but if there were, liquid water and nice ambient temperatures were probably not that hard to find. [url]
- The asteroid that killed off all the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago hit with such force that rocks from Earth could have been ejected out of our atmosphere — to travel as far as Saturn. Rocks from our planet could have carried life to Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn (as well as the moons of those planets), so if we ever find life elsewhere in our solar system, it might have come from Earth. [url]
- Biomolecules may have formed on asteroids when our sun was much younger and warmer than it is now. The ‘Goldilocks’ zone for our sun may have included the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but our sun has cooled with age and the asteroid belt isn’t a very likely place to find liquid water anymore. [url]
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Filed Under: asteroids, astrobiology, bacteria, et, extraterrestrial, extraterrestrial life, extremophile, life, microbe, planets, seti, space, tersicoccus phoenicis
Companies: esa, nasa
DailyDirt: Searching For Life Forms
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Discovering an alien life form would be quite an achievement, but we’ve been burned before by over-eager press releases that claimed to find evidence of life from beyond our planet. NASA might be more careful about making any announcements about life based on peculiar and potentially extra-terrestrial-based life, but NASA seemed to have forgotten about the extraordinary claims over ALH84001. Overall, though, it’s probably good that NASA hasn’t given up on searching for aliens, so here are a few links on looking for life from outer space.
- Recently, some UK scientists claimed to find evidence of alien life in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, suggesting that alien life is just raining down from space all the time. The concept of panspermia is interesting, but the evidence for it isn’t quite convincing yet. [url]
- There are a bunch of ways to look for aliens, such as a search for extraterrestrial technology (SETT) to find non-natural shapes in space. Looking for alien crop circles on exoplanets ain’t easy, though. [url]
- Some astronomers are looking for evidence of Dyson Spheres — a massive array solar panels that advanced alien civilizations might use for sustaining enormous energy needs. This search is actually being funded by a grant from the Templeton Foundation. [url]
- NASA’s Curiosity rover hasn’t detected much methane in the Martian atmosphere, so the odds of finding familiar living organisms seems a bit more distant.Mars was most likely suitable for Earth-like life at some point, but it’s looking pretty dead right now. [url]
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Filed Under: alh84001, aliens, astrobiology, biology, curiosity, dyson sphere, et, extraterrestrial, life, mars, nasa, seti, sett, templeton foundation
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]
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Filed Under: alien, astrobiology, astronomy, biology, cfbdsir2149, enceladus, et, exoplanets, extraterrestrial, life
Companies: nasa
DailyDirt: Detecting Signs Of Life
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Looking for extraterrestrial life has been a largely fruitless task for many decades. There have been a few times when people thought they might have found evidence of life that wasn’t from Earth, but upon further analysis, those discoveries weren’t so clear cut. Still, the search for ETs is on-going, and here are just a few links on some ways to find alien friends.
- Spectroscopic biosignatures could be detected in light reflections off of alien planets. Reflected sunlight is polarized when it bounces off the Earth, and plant life on Earth absorb specific bands of light — so alien worlds may exhibit similar phenomena (if only we could detect it). [url]
- In the 1970s, there was some speculation that cellulose could be detected in interstellar space. However, it’s not so easy to figure out how to detect biopolymers in the vast vacuum of space. [url]
- The Drake Equation estimates how many alien civilizations might exist in our galaxy. It’s just an estimate, and there are a lot of unknown variables… [url]
- Moqui marbles are unusual spherical rocks that have a rusty iron oxide exterior and a sandy interior — and were formed with the help of microorganisms. So if we find similar rocks on other worlds, we might be able to infer that extra-terrestrial microbial life also exists. [url]
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Filed Under: aliens, biosignature, cellulose, et, extraterrestrial, interstellar space, life, moqui marbles, seti, spectroscopy