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Our Local Star
[NSF/AURA] This newly released image from the National Science Foundation (NSF) was taken by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope is the largest solar telescope in the world. This view of an active region was captured in H-alpha light with the Inouye’s Visible Broadband Imager (VBI). H-alpha light reveals details of the solar chromosphere, where…
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Decolonizing Technosignatures: Reimagining Technosignatures Through An Indigenist Lens
[astro-ph.IM] There exist numerous proposals for potential technosignatures that we can search for, but they…
The Role Of Minerals In Prebiotic Evolution: Implications For Identifying Worlds With The Potential For Life’s Origin
[Fundamental Research] Understanding the origin of life requires explaining how abiotic molecules transitioned into the…
Climates Of Temperate Rocky Planets With He-dominated Atmospheres
[astro-ph.EP] We present radiative-convective modeling of rocky exoplanets with He-dominated atmospheres and low envelope mass…
Aerosols And Hydrocarbons In The Atmosphere Of A White Dwarf Planet
[astro-ph.EP] Most stars, including our Sun, will one day evolve into red giants and, subsequently,…
The Galactic Centre G+0.633-0.0604 Molecular Cloud: A New Astrochemical Gold Mine. I. Gas Physical Properties
[astro-ph.GA] In the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ), shocks play a key role in triggering star…
Benzene Formation On Interstellar Dust Grain Analogues Via Single-Atom Fe Catalysis
[MRAS] Benzene has been detected across a range of astrophysical environments, though the primary mechanism…
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,…
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Astronomy & Telescopes
Atmospheres, Climate, Weather
White Paper On Phototrophic Biosignatures: Research Priorities For The Search For Life On Other Worlds
[astro-ph.IM] Photosynthesis is of prime interest in the telescopic search for life beyond the Solar System, because, on Earth, oxygenic photosynthesis produces two strong “biosignatures,” global scale signs of life that can be seen from space: atmospheric oxygen and the Vegetation Red Edge (VRE). The VRE is the spectral reflectance signature of plant leaves, characterized…
Read moreExploration Gear & Tech
Tricorder Tech: Identifying Proteins, Molecule By Molecule
[Université de Genève] Proteins are responsible for most functions in the human body. However, their analysis, which is essential for understanding diseases, developing drugs, and…
Ocean Planet Research: 31 New Species Discovered in Two Weeks of Deep Sea Exploration
[Schmidt Ocean Institute] An international team of midwater experts on board Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor (too) discovered over two dozen new marine species…
Imaging & Spectroscopy
Pioneer 10/11 Telemetry Explanatory Almanac
[astro-ph.IM] This document is intended to accompany our first release of edited Pioneer 10/11 telemetry data. The purpose of this data release is to provide…
Micron-Scale Technosignatures: How a Cubic Metre of Lunar Regolith May Begin to Constrain the Number of Past Technological Civilisations in the Galaxy
[astro-ph.EP] Building on Arkhipov’s proposal that technogenic artefacts may survive natural interstellar transport and accumulate on airless Solar System bodies, we examine the prospects for…
A Scalable Path to Astrometric Exomoon Discoveries with the Nautilus Space Observatory
[astro-ph.IM] Moons orbiting exoplanets (exomoons) can be detected through the reflex motion they impart to their host planet, which is recoverable in relative star-planet astrometric…
Biosignatures & Paleobiology
Autonomous AI-Cosmoindustry and the Quiet Expansion Filter: A Threshold-Based Resolution of the Fermi Paradox
[astro-ph.IM] The Fermi paradox is sharpened, not weakened, by plausible extrapolations of artificial intelligence, autonomous robotics, in-situ resource utilization, orbital manufacturing, space-based computing, and uncrewed…
20 Years Later: The ALH 84001 Debate in Context with Viking’s Results. Lessons Learned and Portals Opened
[Astrobiology via PubMed] This article is an anecdotal recap of lessons learned from the ALH 84001 debate in light of the historical and recent debate…
BioBloom, A Method For Barcoded Saturation Mutagenesis Of An Entire Bacterial Genome
Editor’s note: As we expand outward from Earth to other worlds we are almost certainly going to encounter things we did not expect to find…