When especially interesting new planets are discovered in the cosmos, scientists around the world begin the process of identifying their characteristics -- their orbit, their mass and density, their composition, their thermal properties and much more. It's all part of a drive that seems to be innate in humans to learn about the workings of …
Using Climate Science on Earth to Understand Planets Beyond Earth
Anthony Del Genio started out his career expecting to become first an engineer and then a geophysicist. He was in graduate school at UCLA and had been prepared by previous mentors to enter the geophysics field. But a 1973 department-wide test focused on seismology, rather than fields that he understood better, and his days as …
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On The Frontier Of The Hunt For Signs Of Life On Early Earth And Ancient 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 …
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Exploring Early Earth by Using DNA As A Fossil
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 …
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A Unique Science Expedition to Greenland
It is my very good fortune to report that I have just arrived in Greenland for quite a scientific adventure. Over the next days, a group of scientists (along with me and NASA videographer Mike Toillion) will be traveling to the site of the stromatolite that might, or might not, be the oldest remains …
If Bacteria Could Talk
Did you know that many bacteria -- some of the oldest lifeforms on Earth -- can talk? Really. And not only between the same kind of single-cell bacteria, but back and forth with members of other species, too. Okay, they don't talk in words or with sounds at all. But they definitely communicate in …
The Interiors of Exoplanets May Well Hold the Key to Their Habitability
The quest to find habitable -- and perhaps inhabited -- planets and moons beyond Earth focuses largely on their location in a solar system and the nature of its host star, the eccentricity of its orbit, its size and rockiness, and the chemical composition of its atmosphere, assuming that it has one. Astronomy, astrophysics, cosmochemistry …
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A Magical Solar Eclipse From 1900, Recovered and Instructive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4jfPfMKBgU&feature=youtu.be Sometimes relics from the past help put the present into better focus. Recovered footage of a 1900 total eclipse of the sun -- believed to be the first captured -- has been scanned, restored and then reassembled and retimed frame by frame to create a memorable and kind of spooky look at early …
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The Message of Really, Really Extreme Life
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 …
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Starting Life on Another Planet
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 …
Many Worlds 