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Home > News > Tags > lifeforms
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Perfect environment for microbial life most likely existed on the surface of the Red Planet billions of years ago. A new study indicates that widespread glass fields throughout Mars' northern hemisphere may have been hot spots for life before the world lost its surface water.
According to geologists, glass san... |
26 April 2012
05:26 GMT |
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Astrobiologists really want to find life on Mars. A group of 20 experts, led by Washington State University scientist Dirk Schulze-Makuch propose a new mission to the Red Planet, with the express purpose of searching for signs of past and/or present lifeforms. The mission, dubbed Biological Oxidant and Life Detectio... |
25 April 2012
05:24 GMT |
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Astrobiologists say that nebular clouds contain vast volumes of sugars, organic molecules that can be used to assemble the backbone of ribonucleic acid, a compound called ribose. From this perspective, nebulae are indeed the origins of life as we know it.
A theory called panspermia suggests that the Universe itself... |
26 March 2012
14:01 GMT |
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According to the conclusions of a new scientific study, it would appear that a super-Earth located in the Gliese 581 star system is incapable of spreading life on the other worlds. Simulations indicate that material exchange between the worlds in this system is scarce, and unfavorable to spreading life.
The extras... |
23 March 2012
06:12 GMT |
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The list of conditions that need to be met for a planet to be considered habitable is now one item larger. Experts say that even exoplanets located in their stars' habitability zones may not be inhabitable if their axis have extreme tilts, such as Uranus'.
On Earth, a tilt of 23+ degrees, achieved more tha... |
9 February 2012
11:13 GMT |
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If lifeforms ever had a chance to develop on the Red Planet, they may all be dead now, due to the fact that the planet has been plagued by intense drought for at least 600 million years. This actually makes a lot of sense, even when considering that water-ice still exists at Mars' poles.
At this point, the sur... |
6 February 2012
09:50 GMT |
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Lifeforms need about 24 million generations to develop into something entirely different from what they once were; case in point: the rabbit-to-elephant transition. A new study found that this is the length of time needed to affect such impressive changes in a creature. The same study found that it takes about 100,... |
1 February 2012
11:18 GMT |
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The Jovian moon Io is one of the most promising candidates for supporting life in the solar system. Other celestial bodies, such as Jupiter's Europa and the Saturnine moons Enceladus and Titan, are also good candidates, but only Io could potentially support extreme lifeforms.
One of the things that separate th... |
28 December 2011
10:55 GMT |
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Since Hollywood-inspired scenarios of how we'll meet aliens for the first time are not too likely to happen, scientists are taking matters into their own hands. They have recently decided to conduct a new type of study, one that would focus on finding tracks that aliens may have left behind here on Earth.
Such ... |
27 October 2011
08:59 GMT |
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In a recent series of experiments, experts were able to demonstrate that the 20 amino-acids currently making up the basis of all lifeforms were not selected at random. Of the 100+ such molecules, this set proved to be the most efficient. This hints at the fact that life can arise on a whim on other worlds too.For yea... |
22 August 2011
08:13 GMT |
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Since it formed about 4.5 billion years ago, our planet has suffered catastrophic collisions with other space bodies, which sometimes led to extinction events here. However, it could be that the same instances led to the spreading of basic lifeforms to other celestial bodies in our solar system.In a new study publish... |
22 August 2011
05:31 GMT |
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A team of investigators from the US Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) Center for Particle Astrophysics (CPA) says that dark matter is the most improbable ally that life has in its struggle to spread across the Universe. Two researchers say that the stuff – which cannot... |
28 July 2011
08:34 GMT |
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In a study published only recently, a researcher indicates that space contamination flows from the Earth to the surrounding environment, and not the other way around. The work draws an interesting parallel to the case of the Apollo 11 crew. The astronauts were locked up in quarantine for no less than three weeks afte... |
5 July 2011
05:22 GMT |
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A team of British researchers at the University of Leeds announces the discovery of an interesting new compound, called pyrophosphite. The material, a derivate of phosphorus, may have served as a potent source of energy for the earliest lifeforms that developed on our planet.In other words, the group may have shed mo... |
6 June 2011
09:20 GMT |
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Methane and ethane are the most basic hydrocarbons, but at the same time chemicals capable of arranging themselves into the most complex structures. Experts believe that, on Titan, these two elements have already set the foundation for the development of life.This proposal takes into account the moon's chemistry... |
18 May 2011
05:00 GMT |
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While animals are a common presence all over the planet today, things weren't always set up this way. In fact, more than 550 million years ago, there were no animals to speak of. Researchers are now investigating how the earliest complex lifeforms came to be.Scientists are now proposing that the first animals ma... |
18 May 2011
03:58 GMT |
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Figuring out how life began on our planet is one of the primary goals in science, but the key to unlocking this mystery may lie on the Moon, researchers in the United Kingdom believe. They say that rocks from the early Earth were ejected to the Moon during an asteroid bombardment.Dubbed the Late Heavy Bombardment, th... |
4 May 2011
05:44 GMT |
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In a new study, astronomers have determined that the presence of dark matter can have a beneficial effect on extrasolar planets that are too far away from their parent stars to receive heat. High temperatures are considered to be one of the most important prerequisites for the development of life. As such, experts ha... |
31 March 2011
03:05 GMT |
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Millions of years ago, the planet's biosphere underwent a process known as oxygenation, during which oxygen concentrations in its atmosphere and oceans spiked. Experts are now starting to shed light on the mystery surrounding this event. Before oxygenation occurred, the atmosphere had a significantly different c... |
26 March 2011
07:56 GMT |
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The surface of our neighboring planet, Venus, is not exactly the type of place you would call life-friendly. Chances of lifeforms enduring there are close to zero, experts say, and yet somehow not the same can be argued about its atmosphere. According to some, forms of primitive life may still exist in the mixture of... |
22 March 2011
09:10 GMT |
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A group of researchers drilling underneath the Antarctic ice sheet in 2009 made an amazing discovery when they identified an ampiphod swimming some 12.5 miles away from open water. Researchers now say that the finding has great implications for how life may endure on other worlds.Though many moons in the solar system... |
7 January 2011
17:01 GMT |
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Working off the coast of Peru, a team of researchers was a short while ago able to study a population of the microbes that live beneath the Pacific Ocean floor. These microorganisms are the closest thing to asteroid/extinction-proof lifeforms in the world. The microbes live at geological timescales. The group believe... |
30 December 2010
09:23 GMT |
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Astrobiologists have for a long time recognized the difference between assessing the possibility that life ever existed on the Red Planet, and determining the chances that it may have survived to this day. The issues are very separate from each other in the sense that, even if life once existed on Mars billions of ye... |
5 June 2010
06:56 GMT |
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While digging at a site in Morocco, researchers managed to discover a new series of fossils, which seem to play a very important role in clearing up some of the aspects of the current record of early marine lifeforms. Experts have always said that the dataset was not complete, but even so numerous black holes existed... |
13 May 2010
11:00 GMT |
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A large number of experts participated recently at the Astrobiology Science Conference, which was held near Houston, Texas. At the meeting, scientists and NASA representatives spoke about the challenges still ahead in discovering forms of life on other planet, both in our solar system and beyond. The participants als... |
29 April 2010
03:34 GMT |
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Life can, indeed, be found in the most inhospitable places, as evidenced by the fact that researchers have recently discovered new and unusual species of microbes and bacteria dwelling at the bottom of Lake Huron, one of the American Great Lakes. The creatures inhabit the floor of the lake, at a depth of about 66 fee... |
25 February 2009
02:41 GMT |
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Pollution on Earth is a very real threat to all lifeforms and its negative effects on organisms are well known, so countermeasures will have to be taken, if we all want to survive on the Blue Planet as we did before. But how do you find a source of pollution located far from where the effects are noticed?A group of ... |
20 June 2007
03:37 GMT |
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Now there's an interesting question. What would you do if you knew there are really extraterrestrial beings out there? I think it all depends on how exactly we will find out, but any scenario of this kind will be the breaking news of all history.I'm sure many of you are convinced aliens are really out ther... |
9 June 2007
07:08 GMT |
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The International Space Station (ISS) is supposed to be one of the cleanest places on Earth. The problem is that it's not on Earth. Filth can severely damage a ship, and that's not good news for future Mars explorations taking up to four years.Unfortunately, aboard the ISS there are some unwanted passenger... |
21 May 2007
10:08 GMT |
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The search for extraterrestrial life has taken an unexpected twist as European astronomers just detected an incredible planet, bearing a striking resemblance to our Earth, which could mean that we're not alone in the universe."We are not alone" could prove to be more possible than ever, said the scientists who... |
25 April 2007
02:35 GMT |
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For the first time in history, an alien planet outside our solar system is proven to have water in its atmosphere. Previous theories said water vapor should be present in the atmospheres of nearly all the known extrasolar planets.Travis Barman, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, said water va... |
11 April 2007
04:02 GMT |
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