Saturn's moon Titan has lakes and rivers of liquid hydrocarbons, temperatures that hover around -300 degrees Fahrenheit, and a thick haze that surrounds it and has cloaked it in mystery. An unusual place for sure, but perhaps what's most unusual is that Titan more closely resembles Earth of all the planets and moons in our …
Continue reading "Mapping Titan, the Most Earth-Like Body in Our Solar System"
The presence -- and absence -- of methane gas on Mars has been both very intriguing and very confusing for years. And news coming out last week and then on Monday adds to this scientific mystery. To the great surprise of the Curiosity rover team, their Sample Analysis on Mars instrument sent back a measurement …
Continue reading "Methane on Mars. Here Today, Gone Tomorrow"
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"
Many Worlds 