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Astrobiologist Dale Andersen’s Antarctic Field Report: 11 November 2026: Weather Update And Forecast
Dale Andersen: “Somewhat unexpectedly, last night was fairly quiet, with a few hard wind gusts and the start of falling snow. But the Ultima airbase at Novo reported high winds and blizzard conditions this morning, so the storm is just a short distance north of us. Snow continues to fall and we will likely see…
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Astrobiologist Dale Andersen’s Antarctic Field Report: 10 November 2026: Weather Update Forecast
Dale Andersen: “the winds began to pick up earlier today, and we now have 30…
Dispersal of Bacterial Spores Away From Spacecraft on the Martian Surface is Unlikely to Contaminate Subsequent Life-detection Samples
[International Journal of Astrobiology] Mitigating the forward contamination of Mars in the vicinity of a…
From Exo-Earth Detection to Atmospheric Characterization: Enabling Phase-Dependent Molecular Detection SNR in EXOSIMS
[astro-ph.EP] Detection and characterization of Earth-like worlds is a primary science goal for the upcoming…
Earth As A Potential Source Of Llife For Europa’s Subsurface Ocean
The paper discusses the possibility of dust particles containing living bacteria ejected from Earth reaching Europa and landing on its surface. It is shown that, taking certain factors into account, over a period of 30 − 80 Myr (the estimated age of Europa’s ocean), Jupiter’s moon would have been impacted…
Keep readingDust To Dust: Prospects For Passive Technosignatures As Relics Of ETI
Technological societies are separated in time, not just space — that is the lesson of the Drake equation. Might the best way to seek them be to find technosignatures that persist long after their creators? I present work I and my collaborators have done on the idea of passive technosignatures,…
Keep readingExoplanets, -moons, -comets
Habitable Zones
Astronomy & Telescopes
Atmospheres, Climate, Weather
TitanMPAS – A New Global and Regional Titan Atmospheric Circulation Model. Part I: Global Model Results
[astro-ph.EP] We developed TitanMPAS, a new Titan global and regional climate model, to simulate atmospheric dynamics and methane cycles. It integrates the non-hydrostatic MPAS dynamical core and TitanWRF physics parameterizations, with corrections to relax the thin-atmosphere assumptions on the gravity and curvature terms. TitanMPAS improves upon TitanWRF by incorporating a better moist convection parameterization and…
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Astrobiologist Dale Andersen’s Antarctic Field Report: 7 November 2026: Building Up Our Research Base Infrastructure
Update from Dale Andersen: “We are settling in at Lake Untersee now, getting the camp set up. Safety is our number one priority and we…
Scott Base: Lessons For A Mars Exploration Program
[Antarctic Science]. Scott Base is New Zealand’s year-round Antarctic research station, and it provides an operationally established template for designing sustained human presence in extreme,…
Astrobiologist Dale Andersen’s Antarctic Field Report: 5 November 2026: Traverse to Lake Untersee
Keith’s note: after a routine traverse along the standard route from Ultima Airbase, Dale Andersen and his team arrived at their base camp location at…
Imaging & Spectroscopy
An Ion-Neutral Reaction to Form Cyanobenzene and Ethynylbenzene in Titan’s Atmosphere
[ACS Earth Space Chem] The ion-neutral reaction between cyanoacetylene (HC3N) and phenyl anion (C6H5 -) leads to the formation of cyanobenzene (C6H5CN) and the ethynyl…
A Potential New Dimension of Astrophysical Aromatic Functionalization: Phosphaethynyl (CP) Derivatives
[astro-ph.GA] Quantum chemical computations outline a thermodynamically viable, low-temperature, gas-phase formation pathway for phosphaethynyl cyclopropenylidene (c-C3HCP), resulting from cyclopropenylidene (c-C3H2) and the phosphaethynyl (CP) radical.…
Gas-phase Chemistry of C3H+3: a Key Building Block for Carbon Mass Growth in Space
[physics.chem-ph] The gas-phase chemistry of C3H+3 plays a central role in the growth of carbonaceous species across a wide range of environments, from combustion systems…
Biosignatures & Paleobiology
The Kinetic Basis of the Genetic Code
[q-bio.OT] The origin of the genetic code is an enigma, requiring explanations for the emergence of degeneracy, the organizational structure of the code, and the…
Power Density as a Universal Biosignature: An Application to the Stellivore Hypothesis
[physics.gen-ph] Power density is a central measure underlying a common thread in cosmic evolution. It measures the rate at which free energy transits in a…
Validation of Habitable Zone Limits with a New Radiative-Convective Equilibrium Climate Model
[astro-ph.EP]. The habitable zone (HZ) boundaries calculated with the Clima one-dimensional radiative-convective equilibrium (RCE) model have served as a standard reference for exoplanet target selection…