Astrobiology Roundup
Lots of new scientific results in the past couple of weeks feed directly into the central questions of astrobiology – from the search for life, to the environment of interplanetary and interstellar space, and the grand cosmological terrain we find ourselves in.
Miniature Big Bang Created in Ultra-Cold Lab, and More – The Countdown, Episode 30
More to explore: Earth life ‘may have come from Mars’ (BBC News) Maybe Mars Seeded Earth’s Life, Maybe It Didn’t (Scientific American Blog Network) China Plans Its First Unmanned Moon Landing This Year (New York Times) China to launch lunar probe for landing mission (Xinhua) NASA Data Reveals Mega-Canyon under Greenland Ice Sheet (NASA) Space [...]
Maybe Mars Seeded Earth’s Life, Maybe It Didn’t
This week a major geochemistry conference heard an argument for life on Earth having originated on Mars, but does this hold up to scrutiny?
"Singing Stars" Reveal Their Secrets, and More – The Countdown, Episode 29
More to explore: Curiosity Catches Sight of Mars’ Moon Passing the Other (PsiVid) Latest SpaceX Rocket Test Successfully Goes Sideways (New York Times) Public Naming of Planets and Planetary Satellites: Reaching Out for Worldwide Recognitionwith the Help of the IAU [Pdf] (IAU) Around the World in Four Days: NASA Tracks Chelyabinsk Meteor Plume (NASA) Russian [...]
Curiosity Catches Sight of Mars’ Moon Passing the Other
This video depicts NASA’s Curiosity rover observing Mars’ two moons, then shows one moon passing in front of the other. Phobos and Deimos, the moons of Mars, are thought to be asteroids captured in Mars’ gravitational field.
Top 5 Places to Look for Alien Life – The Countdown, Episode 28
More to explore: Is There Life on Venus? (Scitable) Venus May Have Had Continents and Oceans (Nature News) (Scientific American is part of the Nature Publishing Group) Was Venus Alive?
NASA's Next Mars Probe Arrives at Launch Site
As the space agency's Curiosity rover celebrates one year on Mars, preparations are under way for the launch later this year of NASA's next Red Planet mission, called MAVEN
Twelve Months of Curiosity on Mars in Two Minutes
Mars Curiosity Rover has captured our attention from the time it launched in November 2011 to the time it landed on August 5, 2012 in a very dramatic landing to now.
Fact or Fiction?: We Can Push the Planet into a Runaway Greenhouse Apocalypse
A new study suggests human activity could, in theory, bring about the end of most life on Earth
Solved: The Mystery of the Martian Meteorites
Precision dating of a single rock resolves lingering uncertainties about the Red Planet’s history
Curiosity Rover Samples Air for a Taste of Mars History
Early data from the rover teases out new details of Mars’s atmosphere and how it changed over billions of years
First Distant Planet to Be Seen in Color Is Blue
The Hubble Space Telescope was used to measure visible light from one of the best-studied planets outside our solar system, HD 189733 b