September 2017

Atmospheric tides can have a strong impact on the rotational dynamics of planets. They are of most importance for terrestrial planets located in the habitable zone of their host star, where their competition with solid tides is likely to drive the body towards non-synchronized rotation states of equilibrium, as observed in the case of Venus.

Exoplanet discoveries over recent years have shown that terrestrial planets are exceptionally common. Many of these planets are in compact systems that result in complex orbital dynamics.

Saturn's moon Enceladus has vents emerging from a sub-surface ocean, offering unique probes into the liquid environment. These vents drain into the larger neutral torus in orbit around Saturn.

The search for biology on neighbor planet Mars won't play out like a Hollywood movie starring little green men. Rather, many scientists agree if there was life on the Red Planet, it probably will present itself as fossilized bacteria.

Description: Solar system exploration is in an extraordinary state of expansion. Scientific capabilities to search for evidence of extant or relic life outside Earth--among the principal goals of solar system exploration--are advancing rapidly.

Researchers have performed numerical simulations and compared the results to the composition of the ancient Martian atmosphere trapped in an old meteorite. The researchers have concluded that, 4 billion years ago, Mars had a dense atmosphere whose surface pressure was higher than 0.5 bar (50000 Pa).

The detection of Earth-like exoplanets in the habitable zone of their stars, and their spectroscopic characterization in a search for biosignatures, requires starlight suppression that exceeds the current best ground-based performance by orders of magnitude.

Astrobiology is a scientific discipline that studies life in the Universe. We call it a discipline and not a science because some authors have cast doubts over its epistemological status by calling it 'a science without an object of study'.

River deposits exist across the surface of Mars and record a surface environment from over 3.5 billion years ago that was able to support liquid water at the surface.

Researchers at the University of York have shown that molecules brought to earth in meteorite strikes could potentially be converted into the building blocks of DNA.

Scientists have discovered traces of life more than half-a-billion years old that could change the way we think about how all animals evolved on earth.

The nearest stellar system consists of the stars Proxima, alpha Centauri A and B and at least one planet Proxima b. The habitability of Proxima b and any other planets are likely to be significantly influenced by the orbital evolution of the system.

M-dwarfs or red dwarfs are small (0.5-0.1 solar-mass) and cool ( ~3,000 kelvin) stars and are abundant in the universe.

The scientific interest in directly image and identifying Earth-like planets within the Habitable Zone (HZ) around nearby stars is driving the design of specialized direct imaging mission such as ACESAT, EXO-C, EXO-S and AFTA-C.

We report on a search for engineered signals from a sample of 692 nearby stars using the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT), undertaken as part of the Breakthrough Listen Initiative search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Is Proxima c hiding in this graph?

A new study led by ANU has found that animals and plants may live in warm caves under Antarctica's glaciers.

The Rosetta space probe discovered a large amount of organic material in the nucleus of comet "Chury."

For decades, as astronomers have imagined advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, they categorized such worlds by the amount of energy their inhabitants might conceivably be able to harness and use.

A new X-ray study has revealed that stars like the Sun and their less massive cousins calm down surprisingly quickly after a turbulent youth.

The nearby exoplanet Proxima Centauri b will be a prime future target for characterization, despite questions about its retention of water.

Over the last decade, Aperture Arrays (AA) have successfully replaced parabolic dishes as the technology of choice at low radio frequencies - good examples are the MWA, LWA and LOFAR.

We present a three-species multi-fluid MHD model (H+, H2O+ and e−), endowed with the requisite atmospheric chemistry, that is capable of accurately quantifying the magnitude of water ion losses from exoplanets.

he discovery of boron on Mars gives scientists more clues about whether life could have ever existed on the planet, according to a paper published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The primordial soup that sloshed around billions of years ago, and eventually led to first life on our planet, might have been teeming with primal precursors of proteins.