Extraterrestrial Life

This week on Virtually Speaking Science, I chatted with astrophysicist Katie Freese, author of a new book, The Cosmic Cocktail: Three Parts Dark Matter.

If intelligent aliens are dumb enough to pollute their atmosphere, NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope is powerful enough to spot some of the signs on some exoplanets. Clara Moskowitz reports   

 

After a ten year journey, NASA’s New Horizons mission is still 420 million kilometers from the Pluto system – but that’s close enough to begin to see the orbital dance of an icy world and its major moon.

In a month’s time, the end result of two-and-a-half years of research, thinking, writing, re-writing, re-re-writing, editing, mulling, puzzling, coffee-drinking, beer-swilling, swearing, and tweaking will hit the shelves in the form of my new book The Copernicus Complex.

Looking for a few good popular math books? In the latest New York Times Book Review, I look at five terrific recent ones: Jordan Ellenberg's How Not to Be Wrong, David J.

The galaxy is teeming with planets. Scientists are straining to peer into their atmospheres to seek signs of extraterrestrial life

Mustardlike plants could be the first Earthlings to call Mars home if NASA decides to let them hitch a ride on the next rover

It's summer in the northern hemisphere of a small, damp, planet orbiting a middle-aged star in a spiral galaxy of matter enjoying a brief heyday before colliding with another galaxy in some 4 billion orbits of the same small, damp, planet.

Within a Mars-like laboratory environment, perchlorate salts known to exist on Mars were able to lower the freezing point enough to get ice to turn to liquid water. Clara Moskowitz reports   

 

Asteroid and comet impacts could have destroyed some habitats for life while also creating new ones for bacteria

Astrobiologists hope that the detection of certain minerals on exoplanets by ever-more-sensitive space telescopes could indicate biochemical processes associated with life

The European Southern Observatory broke ground June 19th to build the world's largest telescope atop the Cerro Armazones mountain in Chile. Clara Moskowitz reports