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SPACE: We Should Study (And Maybe Seed) Dead Worlds

Europa - Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The search for life in the universe tends to focus on habitable environments. But to answer questions about how life emerged and spread, as well as the limits of habitability, researchers may want to consider looking at dead worlds — and perhaps even (very carefully) seeding them with life. “The biological study of lifelessness seems counterintuitive, because biology is the study of life,” said astrobiologist Charles Cockell of the University of Edinburgh in the U.K. But in a paper set to be published in April in the journal Astrobiology, Cockell makes the case that focusing entirely on living worlds leaves … Read more

sPACE: White Dwarfs Wear Crushed Corpses of Planets in Their Atmospheres

white dwarf

Astronomers are looking for the bones of dead planets inside the corpses of dead stars — and they may have just found some. In a paper published Feb. 11 in the journal Nature Astronomy, a team of researchers described how they used data from the Gaia space satellite to peer into the atmospheres of four white dwarfs — the shriveled, crystalline husks of once-massive stars that burned through all their fuel. Swirling among the hot soup of hydrogen and helium surrounding those stars, the team detected clear traces of lithium, sodium and potassium — metals that are abundant in planetary … Read more

SPACE: MOXIE Will Soon Make Oxygen – On Mars

MOXIE - Nasa

Having safely landed on Mars on Feb. 18, NASA’s newest rover, Perseverance, is just beginning its scientific exploration of the Red Planet. But sometime in the next few weeks, the car-size robot will also help pave the way for future humans to travel to our neighboring world with a small instrument known as the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE). MOXIE, which will soon be pulling precious oxygen out of Mars’ poisonous atmosphere, is gold-colored and about the size of a bread box. It sits tucked away inside Perseverance’s chassis, where it will conduct the first demonstration on another … Read more

Storing DNA on the Moon

earth from moon - deposit photo

A “lunar ark” hidden inside the moon’s lava tubes could preserve the sperm, eggs and seeds of millions of Earth’s species, a group of scientists has proposed. The ark, or gene bank, would be safely hidden in these hollowed-out tunnels and caves sculpted by lava more than 3 billion years ago and would be powered by solar panels above. It would hold the cryogenically preserved genetic material of all 6.7 million known species of plants, animals and fungi on Earth, which would require at least 250 rocket launches to transport to the moon, according to the researchers. Scientists believe the … Read more

SPACE: China and Russia to Establish Moon Base

moon base - deposit photos

China and Russia want to build a shared moon base. The two countries agreed to the plans on Tuesday (March 9), saying the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) would be “open to all interested countries and international partners.” The “memorandum of understanding” between the two countries, announced by the China National Space Administration (CNSA), described the ILRS as a “comprehensive scientific experiment base with the capability of long-term autonomous operation, built on the lunar surface and/or on the lunar orbit that will carry out multi-disciplinary and multi-objective scientific research activities such as the lunar exploration and utilization, lunar-based observation, basic … Read more

Gays in Space!

Astronaut - Deposit Photos

Jon Carmichael wants to be the first out gay man to go to outer space. And actor George Takei, who famously played Sulu on Star Trek, is trying to help him get there. Carmichael wants to be part of the first all-civilian mission to space, Inspiration 4. The ship will have four crew members. The crew is being selected currently based on qualifying characteristics. Jared Isaacman, a jet pilot who founded a payment processing and e-commerce company and bankrolled the adventure, will be the flight commander. Hayley Arceneaux, representing “Hope,” is a childhood cancer survivor who now works at St. … Read more

Growing Black Holes In a Lab? What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

black hole - pixabay

In 1974, Stephen Hawking theorized that the universe’s darkest gravitational behemoths, black holes, were not the pitch-black star swallowers astronomers imagined, but they spontaneously emitted light — a phenomenon now dubbed Hawking radiation. The problem is, no astronomer has ever observed Hawking’s mysterious radiation, and because it is predicted to be very dim, they may never will. Which is why scientists today are creating their own black holes. Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology did just that. They created a black hole analog out of a few thousand atoms. They were trying to confirm two of Hawking’s most important … Read more

What if Earth’s Magnetic Field Flips Again?

Earth's magnetic field - NASA

A reversal in Earth’s magnetic field thousands of years ago plunged the planet into an environmental crisis that may have resembled “a disaster movie,” scientists recently discovered. Our planet’s magnetic field is dynamic and, numerous times, it has flipped — when the magnetic North and South Poles swap places. In our electronics-dependent world, such a reversal could seriously disrupt communication networks. But the impact could be even more serious than that, according to the new study. For the first time, scientists have found evidence that a polar flip could have serious ecological repercussions. Their investigation connects a magnetic field reversal … Read more

SPACE: Dark Streaks on Mars Explained

Mars dark streaks - NASA

Evidence of landslides on Mars may also raise the prospects that the Red Planet was once hospitable to life. A new study, published Feb. 3 in the journal Science Advances, found that melting ice is combining with the Red Planet’s salty subsurface permafrost, resulting in a chemical reaction that creates a “liquid-like flowing slush.” Scientists think this slush causes landslides that leave dark, narrow lines known as recurring slope lineae (RSL) on the Martian surface. While the icy slush is currently too salty to harbor life, that may not have been the case 2 billion to 3 billion years ago, … Read more

SPACE: Watch Perseverance Land On mars

Perseverance

For the first time ever, you can watch a rover landing on Mars. And it’s epic on many levels. Human beings have been dropping machines on Mars since the 1970s: landers that parachuted to the surface, rovers that were destroyed during landing, and later rovers that survived their landings inside giant, bouncing cushions of airbags. Now powerful skycranes lower NASA rovers to the surface. But in all that time, all those spectacular successes and failures have taken place out of sight on another world. That changed with Perseverance.  NASA outfitted the Perseverance rover and its landing vehicle, which arrived on … Read more