Tag: Astrobiology

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Scientists will seek signs of aliens’ bad behavior

HabEx telescope and sunshade
An artist’s conception shows the Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Mission’s space telescope and its starshade. (NASA / JPL Illustration)

Global warming and nuclear blasts may be bad for humanity, but astrobiologists say they could be good indicators of the presence of intelligent life on distant worlds.

Such signatures of risky biological behavior should therefore be included in the list of things for future space telescopes to seek out, researchers say in a white paper prepared for the National Academy of Sciences.

The strategy would add a contemporary twist to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, reflecting the view that Earth is transitioning into a technology-driven geological era some call the Anthropocene.

“Examining the Anthropocene epoch through the lens of astrobiology can help to understand the future evolution of life on our planet and the possible evolution of technological, energy-intensive life elsewhere in the universe,” the researchers write.

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How scientists are expanding the SETI spectrum

Habitable planet map
This map from the University of Puerto Rico’s Planetary Habitability Laboratory shows the known planetary systems within about 100 light-years from Earth, plotted on a logarithmic scale. The systems with potentially habitable exoplanets are highlighted with red circles. (PHL @ UPR Arecibo)

BERKELEY, Calif. — Twenty years after the movie “Contact” brought the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, to the big screen, it’s dawning on astronomers that the real-world plotline might turn out to be totally different 20 years from now.

So far, SETI has been dominated by radio telescope surveys looking for anomalous patterns that may point to alien transmissions. But SETI’s practitioners are realizing that E.T. may make its presence known in other ways.

Over the next 20 years, or 200 years, SETI may come to stand for sensing extraterrestrial irregularities, ranging from unusual atmospheric chemistry to higher-than-expected thermal emissions. The telltale signs of life beyond our solar system may even be associated with phenomena we haven’t yet come across.

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How we’re turning Earth into alien planet

Earth at night
Imagery from the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership satellite shows Earth’s lights at night. In a newly published study, researchers argue that planets could be classified based on the effects of energy on the environment. (NASA Photo / Joshua Stevens / Miguel Roman)

A trio of scientists has just laid out a new classification scheme for planets that would put Earth into a hybrid category, making the transition from a diverse, photosynthetic-based biosphere to a world dominated by an energy-intensive civilization.

The researchers’ analysis meshes with the view that humanity’s influence has spawned a new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene Age.

“Our premise is that Earth’s entry into the Anthropocene represents what might, from an astrobiological perspective, be a predictable planetary transition. … In our perspective, the beginning of the Anthropocene can be seen as the onset of the hybridization of the planet,” they say in a study published by the journal Anthropocene.

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‘Search for Life in Space’ hits the big screen

"Search for Life in Space"
“The Search for Life In Space” touches on several frontiers in astrobiology. (MacGillivray Freeman)

What better way to celebrate 40 years of NASA’s interplanetary Voyager mission than with an eye-filling movie that brings the decades-old story up to date?

“The Search for Life in Space,” an IMAX 3-D documentary that opens at the Pacific Science Center today, begins with the twin Voyager probes’ exploration of the solar system and beyond. Voyager’s “Grand Tour” got off the ground in 1977 and continues to this day.

The film touches on astronomer Carl Sagan’s campaign to send a message to extraterrestrial civilizations that may someday come across the probe, in the form of a Golden Record that was launched aboard each of the two spacecraft.

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Hubble keeps hope alive for alien oceans

Red dwarf planet
This artist’s impression shows how the surface of a planet orbiting a red dwarf star may appear. The planet is in the habitable zone, so liquid water exists. (CFA Illustration / M. Weiss)

Do some of the Earth-sized planets around a dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1, just 40 light-years away, have liquid water? Newly reported findings from the Hubble Space Telescope give astrobiologists continued cause for hope.

The seven TRAPPIST-1 planets created a sensation in February because they’re the biggest assemblage of Earth-scale worlds known to exist in a single planetary system. What’s more, three of the planets – known by the letters e, f and g – are in an orbital region where scientists say water could exist in liquid form.

That’s thought to be a key condition for life as we know it, which is why the region is known as TRAPPIST-1’s “habitable zone.”

But is the water really there? To get at that question, astronomers used Hubble to study the amount of ultraviolet radiation received by the planets, and what that might be doing to their atmospheres.

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Super-Earth may reveal secrets of alien air

LHS 1140
An artist’s impression shows a super-Earth passing across the disk of the faint red star known as LHS 1140. (CfA Illustration / M. Weiss)

It’s not the closest potentially habitable planet, but astronomers say a world 40 percent wider than Earth could be one of the best places to target in the search for life beyond our solar system.

“This is the most exciting exoplanet I’ve seen in the past decade. We could hardly hope for a better target to perform one of the biggest quests in science – searching for evidence of life beyond Earth,” Jason Dittmann, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said today in a news release.

Dittmann is the lead author of a paper published by the journal Nature describing the exoplanet, known as LHS 1140 b.

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Hubble sees more signs of Europa’s water

Europa plumes
These composite images show a suspected plume of material erupting two years apart from the same location on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. Both plumes, photographed in ultraviolet light by Hubble, were seen in silhouette as the moon passed in front of Jupiter. (NASA / ESA / STScI / USGS)

Scientists say Europa, a mysterious moon of Jupiter, has shown fresh signs of watery plumes that may hint at a habitable environment beneath the ice.

Last year, the Hubble Space Telescope picked up observations of what appeared to be a plume of watery material, emanating from the same area where a plume was spotted in 2014.

The most recent plume rises about 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Europa’s surface, which is twice as high as the earlier plume.

The source of the activity is an unusually warm region of ice that appears to be crisscrossed by cracks, based on pictures captured in the late 1990s by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft.

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Enceladus shows signs of hydrothermal vents

Enceladus' plumes
This composite image shows how plumes of water emanate from fissures in the surface ice of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. (NASA / JPL Illustration)

Scientists have detected molecules of hydrogen in plumes of watery material erupting from cracks in the ice of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn – and that suggests an ocean beneath the ice has hydrothermal vents that just might be capable of sustaining life.

The findings, based on an analysis of data from the Cassini orbiter, are the subject of a study published today in Science as well as a NASA news briefing.

“We’ve always wondered, ‘Are we alone in the universe?’” Linda Spilker, project scientist for the Cassini mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told GeekWire. “Now, as we look out from our own planet, we find worlds in our own solar system that might have life.”

The direct evidence is still wanting, however. The research team, headed by the Southwest Research Institute’s Hunter Waite and Christopher Glein, made their conclusions based on a chain of evidence that started with observations from Cassini’s Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer.

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‘Life’ movie sparks reality check about Mars

Planetary protection officer in "Life."
Rebecca Ferguson plays Miranda North, a planetary protection officer aboard the International Space Station, in the movie “Life.” (Sony Pictures Digital Productions)

Let sleeping Martians lie, particularly if they have a strong grip: That’s one of the lessons you could take away from “Life,” the first monster movie set on the International Space Station.

The movie – which opens today and stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson and Ryan Reynolds – blends the gory horror of “Alien” with the harrowing suspense of “Gravity.” It’s a tour de force of simulated zero-G acrobatics (done mostly with ropes and wires). And it’s an orbital illustration of Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong with having an alien on board does go wrong.

Purists may have questions about just how wrong it goes. Could a minuscule life form brought back from Mars really get that big that quickly? Is it really possible to combine neural, muscular and sensory functions in one cell? And just how easy is it for things to come loose (or get loose) on the space station?

The deepest question may well be, does this nightmare have any chance of happening in real life?

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‘Life’ draws upon worst-case space scenarios

Scene from 'Life'
An astronaut administers a shock to an alien life form in a Petri dish aboard the International Space Station, in a scene from the movie “Life.” Bad idea? (CTMG via YouTube)

A real-life organism provides the inspiration for the alien monster at the center of “Life,” a horror movie that’s set on the International Space Station. But you’d never guess which one.

Would you believe … slime mold?

“We used that as a model, working with the effects team, but ramped it up enormously,” said Adam Rutherford, who served as a science consultant for the film. Moviegoers can get a glimpse at the results in the online trailers for “Life,” which opens in theaters on March 24.

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