When describing exoplanets that are potentially promising candidates for life, scientists often use the terminology of the "habitable zone." This is a description of planets in orbit where temperatures, as predicted by the distance from the host star, are not too cold for liquid water to exist on a planetary surface and also not to …
Continue reading "How Radioactive Elements May Make Planets Suitable or Hostile to Life"
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 …
Continue reading "The Interiors of Exoplanets May Well Hold the Key to Their Habitability"
Before the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, NASA's "follow the water"maxim had already delivered results that suggested a watery past and just maybe some water not far below the surface today that would periodically break through on sun-facing slopes. While tantalizing -- after all, the potential presence of liquid water on a exoplanet's surface is …
Before the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, NASA's "follow the water"maxim had already delivered results that suggested a watery past and just maybe some water not far below the surface today that would periodically break through on sun-facing slopes. While tantalizing -- after all, the potential presence of liquid water on a exoplanet's surface is …
I had the good fortune several years ago to spend many hours in meetings of the science teams for the Curiosity rover, listening in on discussions about what new results beamed back from Mars might mean about the planet's formation, it's early history, how it gained and lost an atmosphere, whether it was a place …
Continue reading "The Search for Exoplanet Life Goes Broad and Deep"
I had the good fortune several years ago to spend many hours in meetings of the science teams for the Curiosity rover, listening in on discussions about what new results beamed back from Mars might mean about the planet's formation, it's early history, how it gained and lost an atmosphere, whether it was a place …
Continue reading "The Search for Exoplanet Life Goes Broad and Deep"
Many Worlds 