Given the complex history of the discovery and announcement in 1995 of the first exoplanet that orbits a sun-like star, it is perhaps no surprise that errors might sneak into the retelling. Two main groups were racing to be first, and for a variety of reasons the discovery ended up being confirmed before it was …
PIXL: A New NASA Instrument For Ferreting Out Clues of Ancient Life on Mars
The search for life, or signs of past life beyond Earth is now a central issue in space science, is central to the mission of NASA, and is actually a potentially breakthrough discovery in the making for humanity. The scientific stakes could hardly be higher. But identifying evidence of ancient microbial life – and …
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The Remarkable Race to Find the First Exoplanet, And the Nobel Prize It Produced
Earlier this week, the two men who detected the first planet outside our solar system that circled a sun-like star won a Nobel Prize in physics. The discovery heralded the beginning of the exoplanet era -- replacing a centuries-old scientific supposition that planets orbited other stars with scientific fact. The two men are Michel Mayor, …
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The Giant Moon That Might Be the Heart of a Jupiter
Artist’s impression of the exomoon candidate Kepler-1625b-i, the planet it is orbiting and the star. (NASA/ESA/L. Hustak, STScI) “Moons are where planets were in the 1990s,” predicted René Heller from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research a few years ago. “We’re on the brink.” Heller was predicting that we were close to the …
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The Planets Too Big for Their Star
Artist rendering of a red dwarf , with three exoplanets orbiting. About 75% of all stars in the sky are the cooler, smaller red dwarfs. (NASA) Two giant planets have been found orbiting a tiny star, defying our theories for how planets are formed. To be entirely truthful, there is nothing new in an exoplanet …
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 …
Searching for the Edge of Habitability
Topographical map of Venus by NASA's Magellan spacecraft (1990 - 1994). Color indicates height. (NASA/JPL/USGS) How many habitable worlds like our own could exist around other stars? Since the discovery of the first exoplanets, the answer to this question has seemed tantalizingly close. But to estimate the number of Earths, we first need to understand …
“Agnostic Biosignatures,” And The Path To Life As We Don’t Know It
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 …
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Many Worlds 