Taking advantage of a total lunar eclipse, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have detected Earth’s own brand of sunscreen—ozone—in our atmosphere. This method simulates how astronomers and astrobiology researchers will search for evidence of life beyond Earth by observing potential “biosignatures” on exoplanets (planets around other stars). Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-08-hubble-earth-proxy-oxygen-potentially.html…
Tag: biosignatures
How astronomers rediscovered a ‘lost world’
And why this rediscovery of a lost world – called NGTS-11b – bodes well for finding habitable exoplanets. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/lost-world-ngts-11b-exoplanet-habitable-zone…
What are exoplanets?
Exoplanets are worlds orbiting distant stars. The history of our knowledge of exoplanets, the various types of exoplanets, how astronomers find them, and more, here. Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/what-are-exoplanets…
Will we soon see potentially habitable exoplanets more clearly?
Because stars are so much brighter than their planets, we’ve barely begun to glimpse distant exoplanets, or planets orbiting distant stars. Now a new technology promises to provide better imaging of these potentially habitable exoworlds. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/exoplanets-direct-imaging-potential-habitability…
Could K2-18b be habitable after all?
A new study by researchers at Cambridge University suggests that the giant exoplanet K2-18b – a mini-Neptune – may be more potentially habitable than previously thought. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/k2-18b-mini-neptune-exoplanets-habitability…
Earth’s cousins: Upcoming missions to look for ‘biosignatures’ in exoplanet atmospheres
Scientists have discovered thousands of exoplanets, including dozens of terrestrial—or rocky—worlds in the habitable zones around their parent stars. A promising approach to search for signs of life on these worlds is to probe exoplanet atmospheres for “biosignatures”—quirks in chemical composition that are telltale signs of life. For example, thanks to photosynthesis, our atmosphere is nearly 21% oxygen, a much higher…
Can polarity-inverted membranes self-assemble on Saturn’s moon Titan?
Astrobiologists are focused on resolving two central questions to understand the environmental and chemical limits of life. By understanding life’s boundaries, they intend to identify possible biosignatures in exoplanet atmospheres and in the solar system. For example, the lipid bilayer membrane is a central prerequisite for life as we know on Earth. Preceding studies based on simulations of molecular dynamics have…