When the word "virus" first came into use, it was as a "poison" and “a very small disease-causing agent.” While the presence of viruses was theorized earlier, they were not fully identified until the 1890s. So from their earliest discovery, viruses were synonymous with disease and generally of the ghastly epidemic type of disease …
Continue reading "Viruses, the Virosphere and Astrovirology"
Change is the one constant in our world-- moving in ways tiny and enormous, constructive and destructive. We're living now in a time when a rampaging pandemic circles the globe and when the climate is changing in so many worrisome and potentially devastating ways. With these ominous changes as a backdrop, it is perhaps useful …
Continue reading "Everything Changes: The Rise and Fall of the Northern Ocean of Mars"
Seldom does one rock outcrop get so many visitors in a day, especially when that outcrop is located in rugged, frigid terrain abutting the Greenland Ice Sheet and can be reached only by helicopter. But this has been a specimen of great importance and notoriety since it appeared from beneath the snow pack some eight …
Continue reading "On The Frontier Of The Hunt For Signs Of Life On Early Earth And Ancient Mars"
Paleontology has for centuries worked to understand the distant past by digging up fossilized remains and analyzing how and why they fit into the evolutionary picture. The results have been impressive. But they have been limited. The evolutionary picture painted relies largely on the discovery of once hard-bodied organisms, with a smattering of iconic finds …
Continue reading "Exploring Early Earth by Using DNA As A Fossil"
Biosignatures -- evidence that says or suggests that life has once been present -- are often very hard to find and interpret. Scientists examining fossilized life on Earth can generally reach some sort of agreement about what is before them, but what about the soft-bodied or even single-celled organisms that were the sum total of …
Continue reading "“Agnostic Biosignatures,” And The Path To Life As We Don’t Know It"
Artist impression of the Hayabusa2 spacecraft touching down on asteroid Ryugu (JAXA / Akihiro Ikeshita) “1… 2… 3… 4…” The counting in the Hayabusa2 control room at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Sciences (JAXA, ISAS) took on a rhythmic beat as everyone in the room took up the chant, their …
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A vehicle that flies like a drone and will try to unravel some of the mysteries of Saturn's moon Titan was selected yesterday to be the next New Frontiers mission to explore the solar system. Searching for the building blocks of life, the Dragonfly mission will be able to fly multiple sorties to sample …
Continue reading "NASA Announces Astrobiology Mission to Titan"
Ethiopia's Dallol volcano and hot springs have created an environment about as hostile to life as can be imagined. Temperatures in the supersaturated water reach more than 200 degrees F (94 C) and are reported to approach pure acidity, with an extraordinarily low pH of 0.25. The environment is also highly salty, with salt chimneys …
Continue reading "The Message of Really, Really Extreme Life"
A look inside the planet simulator in the Origins of Life laboratory at McMaster University. Within this chamber, the origins of life can be explored on different worlds (McMaster University). Have you ever wondered if you could kick-start life on another planet? In the Origins of Life laboratory at McMaster University in Canada, there is …
The Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, or “NExSS,” began four years ago as a NASA initiative to bring together a wide range of scientists involved generally in the search for life on planets outside our solar system. With teams from seventeen academic and NASA centers, NExSS was founded on the conviction that this search …
Many Worlds 