January 2017

Clouds have a strong impact on the climate of planetary atmospheres. The potential scattering greenhouse effect of CO2 ice clouds in the atmospheres of terrestrial extrasolar planets is of particular interest because it might influence the position and thus the extension of the outer boundary of the classic habitable zone around main sequence stars.

A simple chemistry method could vastly enhance how scientists search for signs of life on other planets.

We report the detection of water absorption features in the dayside spectrum of the first-known hot Jupiter, 51 Peg b, confirming the star-planet system to be a double-lined spectroscopic binary.

The presence of water on ancient Mars is a paradox. There's plenty of geographical evidence that rivers periodically flowed across the planet's surface.

Utilizing the most rigorous testing methods to date, researchers from North Carolina State University have isolated additional collagen peptides from an 80-million-year-old Brachylophosaurus. The work lends further support to the idea that organic molecules can persist in specimens tens of millions of years longer than originally believed and has implications for our ability to study the fossil record on the molecular level.

A habitable exoplanet is a world that can maintain stable liquid water on its surface. Techniques and approaches to characterizing such worlds are essential, as performing a census of Earth-like planets that may or may not have life will inform our understanding of how frequently life originates and is sustained on worlds other than our own.

Conditions suitable to support complex life may have developed in Earth's oceans -- and then faded -- more than a billion years before life truly took hold, a new University of Washington-led study has found.

A critical component of exoplanetary studies is an exhaustive characterization of the host star, from which the planetary properties are frequently derived. Of particular value are the radius, temperature, and luminosity, which are key stellar parameters for studies of transit and habitability science.

N-methylformamide, CH₃NHCHO, may be an important molecule for interstellar pre-biotic chemistry because it contains a peptide bond.

Radio astronomy has traditionally depended on observatories allocating time to observers for exclusive use of their telescopes. The disadvantage of this scheme is that the data thus collected is rarely used for other astronomy applications, and in many cases, is unsuitable.

66 million years ago, the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs started the ascent of the mammals, ultimately resulting in humankind's reign on Earth.

We apply Monte Carlo projection to the radial velocity data set that Anglada Escude et al. (2016) use for the discovery of Proxima b. They find an upper limit to the orbital eccentricity of 0.35.

We report the first detection of the prebiotic complex organic molecule CH₃NCO in a solar-type protostar, IRAS16293-2422 B. This species is one of the most abundant complex organic molecule detected on the surface of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and in the insterstellar medium it has only been found in hot cores around high-mass protostars.

In a new study, published in Nature this week, an international research group led from Uppsala University in Sweden presents the discovery of a group of microbes that provide new insights as to how complex cellular life emerged.

ESO has signed an agreement with the Breakthrough Initiatives to adapt the Very Large Telescope instrumentation in Chile to conduct a search for planets in the nearby star system Alpha Centauri.

Recent findings suggest Mars may have been a clement environment for the emergence of life, and may even have compared favorably to Earth in this regard.

What makes a rocky planet Earth-like? Astronomers and geoscientists have joined forces using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to study the mix of elements in exoplanet host stars, and to consider what this reveals about their planets.

To say "we are stardust" may be a cliché, but it's an undeniable fact that most of the essential elements of life are made in stars.

The atmospheres of exoplanets reveal all their properties beyond mass, radius, and orbit. Based on bulk densities, we know that exoplanets larger than 1.5 Earth radii must have gaseous envelopes, hence atmospheres.

Aims: In this paper we focus on the occurrence of glycolaldehyde (HCOCH2OH) in young solar analogs by performing the first homogeneous and unbiased study of this molecule in the Class 0 protostars of the nearby Perseus star forming region.

A critical component of exoplanetary studies is an exhaustive characterization of the host star, from which the planetary properties are frequently derived. Of particular value are the radius, temperature, and luminosity, which are key stellar parameters for studies of transit and habitability science.