Every Wednesday, we’re asking a what-if question – how would our world be different if something were changed? Today’s question is from QSFer Scott: What if the sun were destroyed? Could there still be life in the solar system? From Live Science Share your serious scientific analyses, your off-color jokes, and random thoughts on the topic on our FB and MeWe Groups: FB: http://bit.ly/1MvPABV MeWe: http://bit.ly/2mjg8lf
The methane wafting from Enceladus may be a sign that life teems in the Saturn moon’s subsurface sea, a new study reports. In 2005, NASA’s Cassini Saturn orbiter discovered geysers blasting particles of water ice into space from “tiger stripe” fractures near Enceladus’ south pole. That material, which forms a plume that feeds Saturn’s E ring (the planet’s second-outermost ring), is thought to come from a huge ocean of liquid water that sloshes beneath the moon’s icy shell. And there’s more than just water ice in the plume. During numerous close flybys of the 313-mile-wide (504 kilometers) Enceladus, Cassini spotted … Read more
The amount of water in the atmosphere of Venus is so low that even the most drought-tolerant of Earth’s microbes wouldn’t be able to survive there, a new study has found. The findings seem to wipe out the hope stirred by last year’s discovery of molecules potentially created by living organisms in the scorched planet’s atmosphere that were seen as an indication of the possible presence of life. The new study looked at measurements from probes that flew through the atmosphere of Venus and acquired data about temperature, humidity and pressure in the thick sulfuric acid clouds surrounding the planet. … Read more
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
Venus may harbour life some 50km above its surface, we learned a couple of weeks ago. Now a new paper, published in Nature Astronomy, reveals that the best place for life on Mars might be more than a kilometre below its surface, where an entire network of subglacial lakes has been discovered. Mars was not always so cold and dry as it is now. There are abundant signs that water flowed across its surface in the distant past, but today you’d struggle to find even any crevices that you could call moist. There is nevertheless plenty of water on Mars … Read more
The Earth’s biosphere contains all the known ingredients necessary for life as we know it. Broadly speaking these are: liquid water, at least one source of energy, and an inventory of biologically useful elements and molecules. But the recent discovery of possibly biogenic phosphine in the clouds of Venus reminds us that at least some of these ingredients exist elsewhere in the solar system too. So where are the other most promising locations for extraterrestrial life? Titan Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the only moon in the solar system with a substantial atmosphere. It contains a thick … Read more
An unexplained chemical has turned up in the upper atmosphere of Venus. Scientists are tentatively suggesting it could be a sign of life. The unknown chemical is phosphine gas (PH3), a substance that on Earth mostly comes from anaerobic (non-oxygen-breathing) bacteria or “anthropogenic activity” — stuff humans are doing. It exists in the atmospheres of gas giant planets, due to chemical processes that occur deep in their pressurized depths to bind together three hydrogen atoms and a phosphorus atom. But scientists don’t have any explanation for how it could appear on Venus; no known chemical processes would generate phosphine there. … Read more
A small, soft space rock smacked into Costa Rica on April 23, 2019. And it may have carried building blocks for life. The washing machine-sized clay fireball broke up before landing, . Locals found shards scattered between two villages, La Palmera and Aguas Zarcas. And while meteorites turn up all over Earth, these shards were special; the asteroid that spawned them was a soft remnant of the early solar system, made from the dust from the spinning nebula that would ultimately form our solar system, formed in even older stars. And the meteorites that rained down from the event — … Read more
FOR WRITERS Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer Paula Wyant: How do you balance it all? Evil Day Job, writing, editing/revising, other hobbies and interests, sleep (I’m pretty sure J. Scott does’t sleep, but for the rest of us mere mortals…)…Not to mention household stuff, family stuff, etc. Writers: This is a writer chat – you are welcome to share your own book/link, as long as it fits the chat, but please do so as part of a discussion about the topic. Join the chat: FB: http://bit.ly/1MvPABVMeWe: http://bit.ly/2mjg8lf
A bit of 4-billion-year-old rock blasted off the Martian surface about 15 million years ago and eventually landed in Antarctica, where explorers found it in 1984. In the decades since, organic compounds found in that meteorite have been sources of controversy: Did they come from Mars, or did the meteorites get contaminated on Earth? Now, a team of Japanese researchers has reexamined the meteorites, and say they found traces of ancient oceans, rich in useful carbon and nitrogen — key ingredients for life. The meteorite, known as Allan Hills 84001, after the location where it was first discovered, has long … Read more