* Astronomy

Members Login
Username 
 
Password 
    Remember Me  
Home -> Astronomy News -> Astronomy News -> Alien life
Post Info
TOPIC: Alien life
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Search for Life on Exoplanets
Permalink  
 

Title: Search for Life on Exoplanets: Toward an International Institutional Coordination
Authors: Jean Schneider, Vincent Coude du Foresto, Marc Ollivier

Searching for life in the universe will make use of several large space missions in the visible and thermal infrared, each with increasing spectral and angular resolution. They will require long-term planning over the coming decades. We present the necessity for building an international structure to coordinate activities for the next several decades and sketch the possible structure and role of a dedicated international institution.

Read more  (5kb, PDF)

__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Panspermia
Permalink  
 

Life on Earth is unlikely to have come from space, says a new study on viruses. If life is ever found on another planet, however, the findings could help us judge whether it arrived from space or not.
Panspermia is the idea that life was seeded by extraterrestrial microbes in the form of hardy bacterial spores that hitched a ride on a space rock and landed on Earth. Jaana Bamford of the University of Jyväskylä in Finland and her colleagues say the key to testing this theory lies with viruses, which are thought to be tied to key steps in the evolution of complex life on Earth.
To find the likelihood of viruses stowing away in spores, the team induced a colony of bacteria hosting the Bam35 virus to form spores. Of the 83 spores that were revived to create new bacterial colonies, only 23 contained the virus.

Read more

__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
RE: Alien life
Permalink  
 


Signs of life on planets beyond our own solar system may soon be in our sights. Experiments and calculations presented at an astrobiology meeting last week reveal how the coming generation of space telescopes will for the first time be capable of detecting "biosignatures" in the light from planets orbiting other stars.
Any clues about life on these exoplanets will have to come from the tiny fraction of the parent star's light that interacts with the planet on its journey towards Earth. The Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have both detected gases such as carbon dioxide and water vapour in the atmospheres of a handful of gas-giant exoplanets as they pass in front of their parent stars. The gas molecules absorb light at characteristic wavelengths, and this shows up as dark lines in the spectrum of the starlight which has been filtered through the planet's atmosphere. But seeing evidence of life - so-called biosignatures - in the spectrum of worlds small enough to be rocky like Earth is beyond the sensitivity of these instruments.

Read more

__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Permalink  
 

Interview w/ NASA Alien Hunter David Des Marais



Dave Des Marais has studied the stable isotope geochemistry of lunar rocks and soils, mid-ocean ridge basalts, carbonaceous meteorites, geothermal gases, and ancient (Precambrian) shales and carbonates. He also coordinated a 15 year consortium study of cyanobacterial mat ("biofilm") communities, which serve as modern analogs of ancient biological communities. He is a participating scientist with the Mars Exploration Rover, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Science Laboratory missions. Des Marais has published more than 130 research articles, seven book chapters, and several articles for popular press. He currently serves as an associate editor for the journals Astrobiology and Geobiology .

__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Permalink  
 

Ever since one can remember, humankind has been obsessed with the possibility of extra-terrestrials one-day landing on this Earth. H.G. Wells took the lead in promoting the concept of worlds other than our own blessed planet populated with intelligent alien beings. Wells' story "War of the Worlds" was an earth-shaker in more ways than one. His influence is at the base of several tomes as well as films that have dealt with the subject of alien beings landing on the planet Earth. Fiction aside, scientific researchers have long bent their efforts towards proving once for all the existence - or otherwise - of life in outer space. To take just one instance, the recently landed Mars probe is programmed - among other chores - to probe into the possibility of existence of life on the red planet.

Read more

__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Permalink  
 

If you'd asked 20 years ago the question he's heard over and over -- whether humanity will discover extraterrestrial intelligence in his lifetime -- Dr. Frank Drake would have shrugged and said, "sure."
Today, the renowned astronomer, who turns 79 next month, admits the chances are slimming.

Read more

__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Permalink  
 

Life in the Universe



__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Permalink  
 

Aliens from heaven? Rains red like blood... Strange Theory...



__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Permalink  
 

Within 10 years, we'll find life outside Earth -- that's the prediction of Peter Smith, the University of Arizona professor who led NASA's Phoenix Mars Mission.
While Smith is not predicting we'll encounter the six-legged apes that appeared on Mars in the science fiction books by Edgar Rice Burroughs that captured his imagination as a youngster, he does think we'll find microscopic organisms there.

See more

__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Permalink  
 

The building blocks of life may be more than merely common in the cosmos. Humans and aliens could share a common genetic foundation.
That's the tantalising implication of a pattern found in the formation of amino acids in meteorites, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and simulations of primordial Earth. The pattern appears to follow basic thermodynamic laws, applicable throughout the known universe.

"This may implicate a universal structure of the first genetic codes anywhere" - astrophysicist Ralph Pudritz of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Read more

__________________
«First  <  1 … 7 8 9 10 11 … 18  >  Last»  | Page of 18  sorted by
Quick Reply

Please log in to post quick replies.
Home -> Astronomy News -> Astronomy News -> Alien life


Create your own FREE Forum
Report Abuse 		Powered by ActiveBoard