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NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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  1. Opportunities and Obstacles for Life on Proxima B

    Source: Pale Red Dot Image credit:
    Source: Pale Red Dot

    The discovery of Proxima b is the biggest exoplanet discovery since the discovery of exoplanets. The planet is not much bigger than Earth and resides in the “habitable zone” of the Sun’s nearest stellar neighbor. This planet may represent humanity’s best chance to search for life among the stars. But is Proxima b habitable? Is it inhabited? These questions are impossible to answer at this time because we know so little about the planet. However, we can extrapolate from the worlds of our Solar System, as well as employ theoretical models of galactic, stellar, and planetary evolution, to ...

    Source: [Pale Red Dot]

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    Feature Stories
    September 08, 2016 / Written by: Rory Barnes

  1. Cataclysm at Meteor Crater: Crystal Sheds Light on Earth, Moon, and Mars

    New research at Meteor Crater shows extreme temperatures and pressures during the impact that created the crater 49,000 years ago. Image credit: Aaron Cavosie Image credit: None
    New research at Meteor Crater shows extreme temperatures and pressures during the impact that created the crater 49,000 years ago. Image credit: Aaron Cavosie

    In molten sandstone extracted by prospectors a century ago, an international team of scientists has discovered microscopic crystals telling of unimaginable pressures and temperatures when an asteroid formed Meteor Crater in northern Arizona some 49,000 years ago.

    The crystals, called zircons, have endured temperatures of 2,000 degrees Celsius or more, hot enough to melt any rock on Earth. In our planet’s crust, such temperatures occur only briefly inside impact zones, says Aaron Cavosie, a visiting professor in the NASA Astrobiology Institute’s Wisconsin Astrobiology Research Consortium team at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

    Zircons are tiny, phenomenally stable ...

    Source: [University of Wisconsin-Madison]

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    Research Highlights
    September 02, 2016 / Written by: David Tenenbaum

  1. Before Animals, Evolution Waited Eons to Inhale

    Earliest animals evolved in the mid to late Proterozoic Eon and lie deep in the fossil record. Depicted in the photo is an example of the Pteridinium genus. Credit: Douglas Erwin / National Museum of Natural History Image credit: None
    Earliest animals evolved in the mid to late Proterozoic Eon and lie deep in the fossil record. Depicted in the photo is an example of the Pteridinium genus. Credit: Douglas Erwin / National Museum of Natural History

    Evolution may have been waiting for a decent breath of oxygen, said researcher Chris Reinhard. And that was hard to come by. His research team is tracking down O2 concentrations in oceans, where earliest animals evolved.

    By doing so, they have jumped into the middle of a heated scientific debate on what rising oxygen did, if anything, to charge up evolutionary eras. Reinhard, a geochemist from the Georgia Institute of Technology, is shaking up conventional thinking with the help of computer modeling.

    That thinking goes like this: “Atmospheric oxygen had a value of ‘x’ back then, and so we just ...

    Source: [Georgia Tech]

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    Research Highlights
    August 31, 2016 / Written by: Ben Brumfield

  1. Implications of the Discovery of Proxima b

    Artist's impression of the planet orbiting Proxima Centauri. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser Image credit:
    Artist's impression of the planet orbiting Proxima Centauri. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

    The discovery of the new Earth-sized planet candidate in the habitable zone of the star Proxima Centauri, a little more than four light-years away, was announced by ESO on August 24, 2016. The press release followed weeks of speculation and was itself followed by a great deal of excitement. The research paper on the finding has now been published in Nature.

    To date, Proxima b is the closest exoplanet to us within a Goldilocks zone, putting it in a prime location for future observations, though whether the planet is actually habitable or possesses any other Earth-like qualities is still uncertain ...

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    Feature Stories
    August 26, 2016 / Written by: Miki Huynh

  1. New Icy Worlds Website

    Image credit: None

    The NASA Astrobiology Institute team at Jet Propulsion Laboratory have launched their new website! The Icy Worlds site (https://icyworlds.jpl.nasa.gov/) presents news, multimedia, videos detailing their research investigations, and more. Discover what’s happening in astrobiology at the water-rock interface.

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    Feature Stories
    August 26, 2016 / Written by: Miki Huynh

  1. Astrobiology Primer v2.0 Released

    The long awaited second edition of the Astrobiology Primer has been published in the journal Astrobiology, and is available to download!

    This version is an update of the Primer originally published in 2006 by graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who wanted to provide a comprehensive introduction to the field. The 2016 version contains revised content that addresses the definition of life in scientific research, the origins of planets and planetary systems, the evolution and interactions of life on Earth, habitability on worlds beyond Earth, the search for life, and the overall implications of the astrobiology research. The Primer is intended ...

    Source: [Astrobiology]

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    Feature Stories
    August 23, 2016 / Written by: Miki Huynh

  1. 2016 Selections for the NASA Astrobiology Postdoctoral Program Fellowship

    Congratulations to the recipients of the March 2016 NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellowships in astrobiology!

    Alan Heays
    Advisor: James Lyons, (Arizona State University, Exobiology)
    Topic: “Explaining isotope fractionation of sulphur in the Archean atmosphere”

    Baptiste Journaux
    Advisor: J. Michael Brown/Steve Vance (University of Washington, NAI NASA JPL Icy Worlds team)
    Topic: “Comprehensive thermodynamics of aqueous solutions and ice for understanding the habitability of extraterrestrial oceans”

    Edward Wade Schwieterman
    Advisor: Timothy Lyons (NAI University of California, Riverside team)
    Topic: “Visualizing alternative Earths through time and space”

    Elizabeth Trembath-Reichert
    Advisor: Jan Amend (NAI University of Southern California team)
    Topic: “Stable Isotope ...

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    Feature Stories
    August 22, 2016 / Written by: NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI)

  1. Dissolved Organic Carbon in the High Arctic

    A team of researchers studying samples from streams in the High Arctic has uncovered the lowest values measured thus far for stable carbon isotopic composition of dissolved organic matter (δ13C-DOC) in surface waters. When studying dissolved organic matter in environmental samples, scientists look at its stable carbon isotopic composition in order to learn about where the organic matter came from, and the extent to which it was processed by living organisms.

    The new study outlines how biological activity has a significant impact on water chemistry in the streams, and indicates that environments with low amounts of dissolved organic carbon ...

    Source: [Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences]

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    Research Highlights
    August 19, 2016 / Written by: Aaron Gronstal

  1. Astrobiology Chair Nathaniel Comfort Discusses the RNA World with Pioneering Scientists

    Nathaniel Comfort, Walter Gilbert, W. Ford Doolittle, Ray Gesteland, and George E. Fox discuss the origins of the RNA World hypothesis at the Kluge Center. The webcast was recorded March 17, 2016. Source: <a href="http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=7353">Library of Congress</a> Image credit: None
    Nathaniel Comfort, Walter Gilbert, W. Ford Doolittle, Ray Gesteland, and George E. Fox discuss the origins of the RNA World hypothesis at the Kluge Center. The webcast was recorded March 17, 2016. Source: Library of Congress

    Back in March 2016, science historian and current Blumberg Chair in Astrobiology, Dr. Nathaniel Comfort, led a program at the Kluge Center entitled “The Origins of the RNA World,” bringing into the conversation four scientists involved in the pivotal shift in origins of life research: Dr. Walter Gilbert, Dr. W. Ford Doolittle, Dr. Ray Gesteland, and Dr. George E. Fox. The webcast is available for streaming.

    Comfort later spoke with Dan Turello at the Library of Congress, touching on the history of the RNA World hypothesis, its influence on current research on the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), and how ...

    Source: [Library of Congress]

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    Feature Stories
    August 16, 2016 / Written by: Miki Huynh

  1. SETI Reconceived and Broadened

    SETI’s partially-built Allen Telescope Array in Northern California, the focus of the organization’s effort to collect signals from distant planets, and especially signals that just might have been created by intelligent beings. (SETI) Image credit: None
    SETI’s partially-built Allen Telescope Array in Northern California, the focus of the organization’s effort to collect signals from distant planets, and especially signals that just might have been created by intelligent beings. (SETI)

    For decades, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and its SETI Institute home base have been synonymous with the search for intelligent, technologically advanced life beyond Earth. The pathway to some day finding that potentially sophisticated life has been radio astronomy and the parsing of any seemingly unnatural signals arriving from faraway star system — signals that just might be the product of intelligent extraterrestrial life.

    It has been a lonely five decade search by now, with some tantalizing anomalies to decipher but no “eurekas.” After Congress defunded SETI in the early 1990s — a Nevada senator led the charge against spending ...

    Source: [Many Worlds]

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    Feature Stories
    August 12, 2016 / Written by: Marc Kaufman

  1. Newly Discovered Fossils Strengthen Proposition that World’s First Mass Extinction Engineered by Early Animals

    Fossils from Zaris site in Namibia: left, the discs are fossil remains of the holdfast structures that were holdfast structures for an Ediacaran species called aspidella; middle, bumps on the rock surface are the remains of burrows, called conichnus burrows, that were originally inhabited by anemone-like animals that may have fed on Ediacaran larvae; right, odd annulated and ribbon-like fossils that represent mysterious early animals (likely ecosystem engineers) called shaanxilithes. Image credit: Simon Darroch/Vanderbilt Image credit: None
    Fossils from Zaris site in Namibia: left, the discs are fossil remains of the holdfast structures that were holdfast structures for an Ediacaran species called aspidella; middle, bumps on the rock surface are the remains of burrows, called conichnus burrows, that were originally inhabited by anemone-like animals that may have fed on Ediacaran larvae; right, odd annulated and ribbon-like fossils that represent mysterious early animals (likely ecosystem engineers) called shaanxilithes. Image credit: Simon Darroch/Vanderbilt

    Newly discovered fossil evidence from Namibia strengthens the proposition that the world’s first mass extinction was caused by “ecosystem engineers” – newly evolved biological organisms that altered the environment so radically it drove older species to extinction.

    The event, known as the end-Ediacaran extinction, took place 540 million years ago. The earliest life on Earth consisted of microbes – various types of single-celled organisms. These held sway for more than 3 billion years, when the first multicellular organisms evolved. The most successful of these were the Ediacarans, which spread around the globe about 600 million years ago. They were a largely ...

    Source: [Vanderbilt University]

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    Research Highlights
    August 11, 2016 / Written by: David Salisbury

  1. Lichen Redefined as a Symbiosis of Three

    Basidiomycete yeast was discovered in the cortex of the wolf lichen, as well as among several other species. Image credit: University of Montana Image credit: None
    Basidiomycete yeast was discovered in the cortex of the wolf lichen, as well as among several other species. Image credit: University of Montana

    Recent research from the University of Montana has challenged the longstanding textbook definition of lichen.

    Before the study was published in Science, lichen was thought to be a symbiosis of a single fungus, usually an ascomycete, and a photosynthesizing bacteria or algae. Lead author Toby Spribille analyzed different species across six continents and discovered the existence of a third essential constituent: basidiomycete yeast. The yeast cells were embedded in the lichen cortex and may provide an explanation for the variety of characteristics seen among the species.

    “Basidiomycete yeasts in the cortex of ascomycete macrolichens” has since received wide media coverage ...

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    Research Highlights
    August 08, 2016 / Written by: Miki Huynh

  1. Mayo Clinic Studies How Life Survives Extreme Environments

    To test techniques for searching for life on Mars, samples have been collected from the Atacama desert in Chile as part of the European Research Consortium's Habitability of Martian Environments (HOMES) grant. Image credit: None
    To test techniques for searching for life on Mars, samples have been collected from the Atacama desert in Chile as part of the European Research Consortium's Habitability of Martian Environments (HOMES) grant. A theoretical instrument that would search for individual microbes on the surface of Mars. Image credit: None
    A theoretical instrument that would search for individual microbes on the surface of Mars.

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    Feature Stories
    August 05, 2016 / Written by: Elizabeth Howell

  1. Omani Wells May Shed Light on Martian Methane

    Graduate student Hannah Miller pumping water out of a deep well drilled into peridotite, measuring the pH of the water. Image credit: None
    Graduate student Hannah Miller pumping water out of a deep well drilled into peridotite, measuring the pH of the water. Graduate student Hannah Miller (green shift) preparing to collect water samples pulled from a 300-meter deep well in peridotite by Nicolas Bompard (shown with headscarf). Image credit: None
    Graduate student Hannah Miller (green shift) preparing to collect water samples pulled from a 300-meter deep well in peridotite by Nicolas Bompard (shown with headscarf).

    Source: [astrobio.net]

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    Research Highlights
    August 03, 2016 / Written by: Jeremy Hsu

  1. Call for Applications for Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology

    Image credit: None

    The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress is now accepting applications for the 5th Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology. The application deadline is December 1, 2016.

    The Astrobiology Chair is a distinguished senior research position in residence at the Library of Congress for a period of up to twelve months. Using research facilities and services at the Library of Congress, the scholar engages in research at the intersection of the science of astrobiology and its humanistic and social implications. The appointment ensures the subject of astrobiology’s role in culture and society ...

    Source: [Library of Congress]

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    Feature Stories
    August 01, 2016 / Written by: Library of Congress
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