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PJ Harvey Announces New Song “Voyager”
PJ Harvey announces ‘Voyager’, her first new music following the release of I Inside the Old Year Dying in 2023. Listen and watch the video, and pre-order the limited edition 7″ vinyl, exclusive to the PJH store. Recorded with a full orchestra at Miraval Studios in Provence, ‘Voyager’ takes its name from the NASA probes…
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Fifty Years after Viking: The Promise of Solar System Microbiology and Microbial Ecology
[Astrobiology via PubMed] The ambiguity of the Viking lander life-detection experiments left microbiology and microbial…
Characterising Transiting Exoplanets At Long Orbital Period: Lessons Learned For PLATO From 10 Years Of Monitoring The HIP41378 System
[astro-ph.EP] The upcoming launch of the PLATO mission will open a new area of exoplanetary…
Implications Of Self-consistent H2O Ice Optical Constants On Radiative Transfer Models Of Disks
[astro-ph.EP] Interstellar water (H2O) ice exhibits significantly varied profiles over its spectral features with temperature…
The GAPS Programme at TNG LXXIV. A Reanalysis Of The Planetary Systems TOI-1272 And TOI-1694 With HARPS-N And Retraction Of The Planetary Interpretation Of TOI-1272 c
[astro-ph.EP] Hot Neptunes are close-in exoplanets that occupy a sparsely populated region of parameter space…
Radiatively Controlled Thermal Stability of High-Altitude Clouds in Exoplanetary Atmospheres
[astro-ph.EP] One of the most striking findings of exoplanetary science is the ubiquity of clouds.…
Astrochemistry
Input Sought: Review of Progress Toward the Decadal Survey Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s
The National Academies’ decadal survey, Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s…
Reaction Mechanisms and Kinetics of CN and CCH with H2CS: Implications for Interstellar Sulfur Chemistry
We report an ab initio and master-equation investigation of the gas-phase reactions of thioformaldehyde (H2CS)…
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Arrives In Florida Ahead of Launch
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope arrived June 21, at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center…
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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Atmospheres, Climate, Weather
Turbulence-coupled Electrodynamics Of The Martian Year 34 Global Dust Storm On Mar
We studied the electrodynamic environment during the Martian year 34 (MY 34) global dust storm using data from the Mars Climate Database v.6.1. Our physics-based approach looked at triboelectric charging, atmospheric conductivity, and electrostatic breakdown using the Paschen criterion. We aimed to find out when and where the lower atmosphere could support electric fields strong…
Read moreExploration Gear & Tech
Tricorder Tech: ESA CAVES 2026 Cavenauts Use An Electronic FieldBook
Astronauts Tracy Dyson (NASA), Rosemary Coogan (ESA) and Ayu Yoneda (JAXA) measuring water parameters and recording them in the Electronic FieldBook during ESA CAVES2026 course.…
Lipid Biomarkers In Microbialites From A Maar Lake: An Astrobiological Study Of Biomarker Preservation under Mars Analog Conditions
Lipids constitute resistant biomarkers that have been proposed as pacemakers in the search for possible microbial life-forms in Mars’ past. The extreme conditions on the…
Astrobiology In The Time of Artificial Intelligence
The Viking missions showcased multiple spaceflight technologies representing state-of-the-art capabilities: from digital line-scan imaging to the operation of complex onboard laboratories and software-controlled process autonomy.…
Imaging & Spectroscopy
How To Actually Build Your Own Working Tricorder
Editor’s note: Hamzah Abugosh has built a functional tricorder. I share the same fascination he has with the notion of a Tricorder as seen on…
Webb Finds Clues To The Ancient Origin Of Comet 3I/ATLAS
The third identified interstellar comet in human history has a surprising chemical makeup, raising questions as to how common, or unusual, conditions in our own…
Water Planet Recon: New AI Approach Reveals Earth’s Ocean Currents In Unprecedented Detail
Editor’s note: when our first missions – human or robotic – arrive at a new world we’ll want to do glean as much information from…
Biosignatures & Paleobiology
Ecophysiological Study Of Green Microalgae Isolated From The Grit Crust Of The Atacama Desert
Terrestrial algae play a critical, yet often overlooked, role in the functioning of biological soil crusts (biocrusts), which are considered microecosystems, particularly in extreme environments.…
Hydrothermal Origin Of Metabolic Phosphorylation
Phosphate is central to modern bioenergetics and to all theories for the origin of life. How phosphate entered metabolism is unknown, though microbial physiology and…
Energy-Limited Radiolytic Habitability in the Shallow Martian Subsurface: Implications for ExoMars Rosalind Franklin and Tianwen-3
The surface of Mars is sterilized by ionizing radiation and pervasive oxidants; its shallow subsurface, shielded from ultraviolet light and the most reactive oxidation, may…