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4 Apr 2013 |
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Mapping the Chemistry Needed for Life at Europa
A new paper led by a NASA researcher shows that hydrogen peroxide is abundant across much of the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. The authors argue that if the peroxide on the surface of Europa mixes into the ocean below, it could be an important energy supply for simple forms of life, if life were to exist there.
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2 Apr 2013 |
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NASA Team Investigates Complex Chemistry at Titan
A laboratory experiment at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., simulating the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan suggests complex organic chemistry that could eventually lead to the building blocks of life extends lower in the atmosphere than previously thought. The results now point out another region on the moon that could brew up prebiotic materials.
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12 Mar 2013 |
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NASA Rover Finds Conditions Once Suited for Ancient Life on Mars
An analysis of a rock sample collected by NASA's Curiosity rover shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes. Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon -- some of the key chemical ingredients for life -- in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet last month.
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5 Dec 2012 |
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Other Solar Systems Might Be More Habitable Than Ours
Our Earth feels like a warm and welcoming place for us life forms, but beyond our little planet, the majority of the solar system is too cold for us to live comfortably. A new study suggests that planets in other solar systems might be more habitable than our own because, on the whole, they would be warmer -- up to 25 % warmer. This would make them more geologically active and more likely to retain enough liquid water to support life, at least in its microbial form. In turn, the "Goldilocks Zone" around other stars -- the habitable region -- would be bigger than the Zone in our own Solar System.
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29 Nov 2012 |
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Ancient Microbes Found Living Beneath Antarctic Ice
A pioneering study reveals, for the first time, a viable community of bacteria that survives and ekes out a living in a dark, salty and subfreezing environment beneath nearly 20 meters of ice in one of Antarctica's most isolated lakes. The study indicates it's plausible that a life-supporting energy source exists solely from the chemical reaction between anoxic salt water and the rock. If so, this provides an entirely new framework for thinking about how life can be supported in cryoecosystems on Earth and in other icy worlds of the universe.
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1 Nov 2012 |
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Asteroid Belts at Just the Right Place are Friendly to Life
Solar systems with life-bearing planets may be rare if they are dependent on the presence of asteroid belts of just the right mass, according to a study by Rebecca Martin, a NASA Sagan Fellow from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and astronomer Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD. They suggest that the size and location of an asteroid belt, shaped by the evolution of the sun's planet-forming disk and by the gravitational influence of a nearby giant Jupiter-like planet, may determine whether complex life will evolve on an Earth-like planet.
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