For years, noted chemist and synthetic life researcher Steven Benner has talked about the necessary role of the element boron in the origin of life. Without boron, he has found, many of the building blocks needed to form the earliest self-replicating ribonucleic acid (RNA) fall apart when they come into contact with water, which is …
Curiosity Has Found The Element Boron On Mars. That's More Important Than You Might Think
For years, noted chemist and synthetic life researcher Steven Benner has talked about the necessary role of the element boron in the origin of life. Without boron, he has found, many of the building blocks needed to form the earliest self-replicating ribonucleic acid (RNA) fall apart when they come into contact with water, which is …
Enceladus and Water Worlds
As if the prospect of billions of potentially habitable exoplanets wasn't enough to get people excited, what about all those watery exo-moons too? The question arises as the Cassini mission makes its final pass near the now famous geysers at the south pole of the moon Enceladus ,scheduled for Saturday. The plumes are currently in …
Many Worlds, Subterranean Edition
One of the richest lines of research for those thinking about life beyond Earth has been the world of microscopic creatures that live in especially extreme and hostile environments here. The realm of extremophiles has exploded in roughly the period that exoplanet discoveries have exploded, and both serve to significantly change our view of what's …
Counting Our Countless Worlds
Imagine counting all the people who have ever lived on Earth, well over 100 billion of them. Then imagine counting all the planets now orbiting stars in our Milky Way galaxy , and in particular the ones that are roughly speaking Earth-sized. Not so big that the planet turns into a gas giant, and not so …
Many Worlds 