New Research on Microbes Expands Known Limits for Life on Earth and Beyond Jan. 26, 2024 New research led by Stanford University scientists predicts life can persist in extremely salty environments, beyond the limit previously thought possible. Read more Image
New Study Suggests Some Forms of Life Could Exist in Venus’ Sulfuric Acid Clouds Jan. 25, 2024 A team of chemists and planetary scientists have found evidence that a form of life that uses sulfuric acid as a liquid medium could exist in some of the clouds covering Venus. Read more Image
Exoplanet Climate: It Takes Nothing to Switch from Habitable to Hell Jan. 11, 2024 The Earth is a wonderful blue and green dot covered with oceans and life, while Venus is a yellowish sterile sphere that is not only inhospitable but also sterile. However, the difference between the two is only a few degrees in temperature. Read more Image
Entropy Could be Key to a Planet’s Habitability Jan. 10, 2024 We all know that to have life on a world, you need three critical items: water, warmth, and food. Now add to that a factor called “entropy.” It plays a role in determining if a given planet can sustain and grow complex life. Read more Image
Webb Finds Icy Complex Organic Molecules around Protostars Jan. 9, 2024 In the quest to understand how and where life might arise in the galaxy, astronomers search for its building blocks. Complex Organic Molecules (COMs) are some of those blocks. Read more Image
Curiosity Rover Finds New Evidence of Ancient Mars Rivers, a Key Signal for Life Dec. 14, 2023 New analysis of data from the Curiosity rover reveals that much of the craters on Mars today could have once been habitable rivers. Read more Image
Looking at Connections between Archaea and Eukarya Dec. 13, 2023 A study is helping scientists better understand the history of genome organization and how such systems have evolved through time following the origins of life on Earth. Read more Image
Synthesizing Nucleic Acids before the Emergence of Life Dec. 12, 2023 A team of NASA-supported scientists have provided new information on how one class of biomolecule, nucleic acids, could have formed outside of living cells with the help of naturally occurring minerals in the environment before life’s emergence on Earth. Read more Image
Impact Experiments Probe the Origin of Organics on the Dwarf Planet Ceres Dec. 11, 2023 One of the most exciting findings from NASA’s Dawn mission is that Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter, hosts complex organics. Read more Image
Digging Deeper to Find Life on Ocean Worlds Dec. 8, 2023 “Follow the water” has been the mantra of the astrobiology community in search of alien life in the universe. Water is a fundamental building block of all terrestrial life as we know it and is abundant throughout the solar system, and perhaps, the universe. Read more Image