DailyDirt: Solving Mysteries Of The Universe...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The vast blackness of space might not look like much to the naked eye, but the origins of all life have come from distant stars. As Carl Sagan put it, we are all "star stuff" -- we're made of atoms that could have only been born in intense supernovas. It may appear futile to try to decipher what happened billions of years ago, but astronomers can literally look back in time and see the formation of the universe. Here are just a few cool things astronomers have discovered lately.

• A prebiotic, chiral molecule has been detected for the first time outside of our own solar system. All known life on earth is based on chiral molecules, but no one knows how this situation occurred originally. This first example of a chiral propylene oxide molecule could help explain how life on our planet acquired its preference for handedness or how primordial cosmic seeds might spread through the universe. (Or not.)
• Oxygen has been found 13.1 billion light years away -- perhaps the first oxygen atoms to form in the universe. There's not that much oxygen at a galaxy called SXDF-NB1006-2, but its abundance is in line with simulations of how we think early stars formed.
• Galaxy simulations on supercomputers help explain how stars form in interstellar space. Apparently, feedback from existing stars can regulate how other stars form and influence the growth of galaxies, solving a mystery of how a relatively small fraction of gas in interstellar space is used to form a star.

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Filed Under: astrobiology, astronomy, chirality, life, origin of life, oxygen, propylene oxide, space, space exploration, stars, sxdf-nb1006-2

DailyDirt: All Alone In The Universe With Nowhere To Go...

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People have been looking up into the sky for centuries, wondering what's out there and if we're alone on this world. Astronomers, more recently, have been looking into deep space with some relatively high-tech equipment -- finding some strangely inexplicable phenomena (that could be alien megastructures?!) and still wondering if we're alone in the universe. We may never know for sure if intelligent life exists anywhere else, but it doesn't hurt to look, does it?

• The Breakthrough Prize Foundation is aiming to shoot lasers at a light-propelled nanocraft that could reach Alpha Centauri in a few decades (instead of millennia). This lightsail spacecraft would have a mass of just a few grams, so it could be accelerated to speeds of 100 million miles per hour -- much faster than any existing spacecraft we've ever built (like Voyager I zipping away at about 38,500 mph). [url]
• The Kepler space telescope has gotten plenty of headlines for finding thousands of exoplanets, but the far lesser-known TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope) in Belgium is also finding some exoplanets, too. The TRAPPIST telescope is stuck on the ground (unlike KST), but it's looking at a few dozen ultracool dwarf stars and has found 3 planets orbiting a star that's just 0.05 percent as bright as our Sun. [url]
• Kepler 36b and Kepler 36c are two exoplanets orbiting the same star which could possibly harbor some kind of microbial life (but probably not). Still, it's an interesting question whether or not life -- if it exists on either Kepler 36b or 36c -- could be transferred to its neighboring planet. (Though maybe we should focus on looking at Venus and Mars first....) [url]

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Filed Under: alien megastructures, aliens, astrobiology, astronomy, breakthrough prize foundation, et, exoplanets, extraterrestrial life, kepler space telescope, life, lightsail, nanocraft, seti, spacecraft, telescopes, trappist

DailyDirt: More Clues To The Origins Of Life On Earth

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The beginnings of life on our planet aren't well known because we simply don't know the exact conditions that were present billions of years ago. However, experiments under lab conditions that try to simulate the early solar system could shed some light on how early life developed, and there are some researchers looking into prebiotic chemical reactions to see if we can narrow down the possibilities and rule out any pathways that are unlikely to have contributed to our present thriving ecosystem. These experiments could lead to a better understanding of what life is and how we might detect other kinds of life elsewhere in our solar system or galaxy.

• Some chemists demonstrate that many important prebiotic molecules can be created with just hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen cyanide and ultraviolet light. This finding could help end the debate over whether early life began with cell membranes or RNA or DNA -- or create more questions as it looks like the precursors to RNA, lipids and amino acids could have all been made at the same time under similar conditions which might have been common in prebiotic earth. [url]
• Professor Jack Szostak talks about the origins of life on earth and how lab experiments could help us understand astrobiology. Szostak discusses how early life on our planet might have started with simpler biomolecules than we have today and became more complex with natural selection -- but there are still a lot of unanswered questions. [url]
• Meteorites bombarded by radiation could have seeded prebiotic molecules on planets throughout the universe. Zapping formamide under conditions thought to be similar to early solar systems resulted in organic molecules such as nucleobases, carboxylic acids, sugars, amino acids, and some precursors to RNA and DNA. [url]

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Filed Under: astrobiology, biology, biomolecules, dna, jack szostak, life, meteorites, prebiotic molecules, rna, seti

DailyDirt: To Seek Out New Life And New Civilizations...

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The search for extraterrestrial life hasn't yielded much evidence that there's anyone else out there. We could be looking in the wrong places or not looking with the right instruments to detect faint signals -- or maybe we're actually alone. But as they say with the lottery, you can't win if you don't play, so we won't find any aliens if we don't continue looking. (Assuming that aliens aren't already on their way to come and get us.)

• If Dyson spheres actually exist (we're not talking about vacuum cleaners here), they might be harder to detect than previously thought. A Dyson sphere around a white dwarf star might be feasible if an advanced civilization figures out how to survive the red giant and supernova stages of a star -- or travel to an existing white dwarf. [url]
• There are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, and tens of billions with planets in a "Goldilocks' zone" where we think life as we know it could exist. Endless speculation doesn't really explain why we haven't seen any evidence of life yet, but it's fun to try to guess what's going on with aliens and what they might look like. [url]
• Optimists in the space sciences predict that we'll find evidence of alien life forms in the next few decades. We may continue to find evidence that habitable conditions exist elsewhere in the universe, but actually finding life could take a bit longer. [url]

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Filed Under: aliens, astrobiology, dyson sphere, extraterrestrial life, fermi paradox, goldilocks zone, seti

DailyDirt: Alien Lifeforms In Our Solar System

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So far, we only have one example of life -- the biosphere of Earth. Our planet probably isn't unique in the universe, but compared to the other large objects in our solar system, Earth looks special. However, there are a few other spots in our solar system that could support life. It would be so nice to find another living neighbor -- as long as they kept to themselves after we meet them.

• Jupiter's moon, Europa, could harbor life in vast watery oceans beneath its icy crust. Europa's subsurface oceans hold roughly twice as much water (or more) as the Earth's oceans -- so there could be organisms similar to extremophiles that live near hydrothermal vents at the bottom of our oceans. [url]
• Life, but not as we know it, could potentially exist on Saturn's giant moon, Titan. There's a sea of liquid methane on Titan which would require a very different biochemistry -- but it's apparently not unthinkable that a theoretical cell membrane called an azotosome might exist. Or not. [url]
• Optimistic astrobiologists might be surprised to find lifeforms that are more complex than single-celled organisms. Newly discovered Antarctic crustaceans and fish living deep under a glacier in Lake Whillans provide an example of an unexpected thriving ecosystem that is almost completely isolated from the rest of our biosphere. [url]

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Filed Under: antarctica, astrobiology, azotosome, biosphere, ecosystem, europa, extremophile, lake whillans, life, titan

DailyDirt: Mounting Evidence For Life On Mars

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A warmer, wetter Mars might have been a habitable world, but it's not clear exactly how the conditions on Mars changed and became so different. Our neighboring planet had the best chances for harboring life as we know it, even if it doesn't anymore. There's really no proof that Mars supported life (yet?), but it's not impossible to think that things once lived there. Here are just a few clues that could lead to finding alien lifeforms.

• NASA's Curiosity rover measured a spike of methane gas that could indicate biological activity. Of course, this methane plume might have non-biological origins, but it's very interesting to see fluctuations of organic molecules. [url]
• Sediment found on Mars might have been home to microbial colonies, analogous to life on Earth, forming microbially-induced sedimentary structures (MISS). Similar-looking rock structures don't necessarily mean microbes lived on Mars, but it would be an extraordinary coincidence. [url]
• An ancient freshwater lake likely existed on Mars for at least 100,000 years. The presence of fine-grained sedimentary rocks and their chemical composition point to a sizable body of water that might have been common on the red planet in its distant past. [url]

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Filed Under: astrobiology, curiosity, et, extraterrestrial life, life, mars, microbes, space, space exploration
Companies: nasa

DailyDirt: Life Across The Universe

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Astrobiology is a field that doesn't have a whole lot of experimental evidence, but it's interesting to entertain the possibilities of life that might exist elsewhere in the universe. So far, we've been looking for ET biology that's similar to our own, but there's nothing that says biology must be based on DNA/RNA/proteins/etc. Here are just a few more links on possibly finding life on other worlds.

• Stars in our galaxy generally travel only a few hundred miles per second relative to their peers, but some hypervelocity stars traveling at hundreds of thousands of miles per second might escape our galaxy -- and spread life across the universe. It could happen theoretically, but no one has yet observed this phenomenon directly. [url]
• Data from the Kepler mission suggests possibly-habitable planets exist near a significant fraction of all stars -- providing better estimates for values in the Drake equation. However, we're still probably very far away from our nearest neighbors (if they even exist). [url]
• How tough is DNA? Tough enough to survive on the outside of a rocket going to space and also re-entry from orbit. Presumably, this also means that it's not impossible for ET DNA to arrive on the tons of meteorites that hit our planet every day.[url]

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Filed Under: alien, astrobiology, dna, drake equation, et, exoplanet, extraterrestrial, habitable, kepler, life

DailyDirt: We Should Have Written Down ET's Phone Number...

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The search for extraterrestrial life has been going on for ages, but we still haven't found much convincing evidence that life on other objects in space exists. There's at least one bold prediction that we'll find signs of intelligent life in outer space within the next 25 years, but that's not a bet too many scientists would likely make. Here are just a few more links on the search for ET -- for those bored with the lifeforms on this planet.

• Out of about 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, a couple astrophysicists estimate that only 10% are able to support complex life. Apparently, gamma ray bursts are regularly wiping out anything more complex than microbes in the vast majority of space. That is, assuming that other complex life is similar to our own biosphere and vulnerable to gamma radiation. [url]
• If we're expecting life on other worlds to look similar to our own, we might want to check out a Caribbean shrimp species that lives near hydrothermal vents in a symbiotic relationship with extremophile bacteria. The water near these undersea vents can reach 400°C, and similar conditions could be present elsewhere in our solar system (eg. in Europa's subsurface ocean?). [url]
• Alien hunters could hit the jackpot and discover evidence of intelligent life (beyond Earth) by 2040. The SETI Institute has been looking for several decades now, but we're learning more and more about where best to look (not towards the center of the Milky Way galaxy where gamma ray bursts are more common). As long as the funding to keep listening for signals doesn't completely dry up, we could find out that we're not alone in the universe (maybe). [url]

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Filed Under: aliens, astrobiology, biosphere, et. extraterrestrial, extraterrestrial life, extremophiles, lifeforms, seti, space, space exploration

DailyDirt: All Kinds Of Bugs Living In Outer Space?

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Panspermia isn't a crazy idea, especially when we seem to keep finding extremophiles that can survive in very harsh environments. The components of life may be traveling between planets or solar systems at a non-zero rate, seeding the universe with living materials. That said, life is still relatively fragile, but there may be some optimism in finding living specimens elsewhere than Earth. (First, though, we have to make sure we're not the ones contaminating our own solar system.) Here are just a few links on various organisms that might survive a trip in space -- without a space ship.

• The International Space Station (ISS) may have microorganisms living on the outside of the station, and evidence of sea plankton has been found on the exterior surface of the ISS. No one knows exactly how sea plankton could have gotten on the ISS, but contamination on interplanetary objects (eg. comets, asteroids, etc) could spread life farther than previously suspected. [url]
• Astrobiology researchers are just starting to figure out which known organisms can survive the harsh conditions of space. Spore-forming bacteria (eg. Bacillus pumilus SAFR-032) have been seen to survive in simulated space environments, and similar organisms could support lithopanspermia theories suggesting an extra-terrestrial origin of life as we know it. [url]
• Biologists can make very tiny space suits for insects if they really wanted to. In order to study live insects in a scanning electron microscopes (SEM), biologists can coat bugs with a polymer film that protects them from drying out in a vacuum chamber (and lets them live while they're being bombarded with charged particles). [url]

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Filed Under: astrobiology, et, extremophiles, insects, iss, lithopanspermia, microbes, panspermia, plankton, space

DailyDirt: Water, Water, Everywhere... In The Universe?

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Water is an essential substance for life (as we know it), so it's not too surprising that as we look for evidence of extraterrestrial life, we often start by looking for signs of water. (We also look for water on places like the moon because locations near water/ice would be nice if we ever want to build a lunar base.) Here are just a few links on finding water in our solar system and beyond.

• NASA has released its tentative plans for the next 30 years, and its goals are to answer 3 questions: Are we alone? How did we get here? And how does the universe work? Upcoming telescopes will be looking for exoplanets and may be able to detect atmospheres on distant worlds. [url]
• Stardust is mostly made up of silicates floating in space, and when these dust particles encounter solar wind (charged hydrogen ions), water can form from these interplanetary dust particles. Assuming similar stardust exists in other star systems, water and the basic ingredients for life as we know it might exist throughout the universe. [url]
• The Herschel space observatory has detected water spewing from the dwarf planet Ceres (located in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter). The European Space Agency (ESA) reports that Ceres has a very thin water vapor atmosphere, and this is evidence of an icy surface. NASA's Dawn mission is scheduled to visit Ceres in 2015, so we might get a closer look in the near future. [url]

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Filed Under: astrobiology, ceres, et, extraterrestrial life, herschel telescope, interplanetary dust particles, space, stardust, water
Companies: esa, nasa