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Tricorder Tech: New Handheld Device Maps Chemical Composition Using Infrared Light
[Optica] Researchers have developed a compact, handheld mid-infrared imaging spectrometer that can produce high-resolution chemical maps of a sample without using any stains or labels. With more development, the handheld device might provide a portable and easy-to-use way to map the molecular makeup of tissues and other samples. Editor’s note: as we send increasingly sophisticated…
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No Statistically Significant Evidence For A Correlation Between Stellar And planetary Composition
[astro-ph.EP] The chemical compositions of planets and their hosts stars are intrinsically linked, having formed…
Water Planet Recon: How Accurately Can We Measure Earth Ocean’s Deepest Point?
[Research Organization of Information and Systems]. How deep is the deepest ocean—and how precisely can…
Webb Reveals A Stunning Panorama Of Star Formation
[ESA] This starry view of the nearby star-forming region IC 348 is one of the…
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
The Atomic C/O Ratio Of Exoplanet KELT-9b
[astro-ph.EP] The carbon-to-oxygen (C/O) ratio of a giant planet’s atmosphere has long been theorised to hold compositional information that can be traced back to its formation history. Typically, the C/O ratio of an exoplanetary atmosphere is inferred from abundance measurements of major C- and O-bearing molecules such as CO, CO2, H2O, and OH. However, some…
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Deep Learning of SHERLOC Raman Spectra For Facilitating Mars Astromaterial Identification
[Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy] Raman spectroscopy has been explored for planetary exploration, particularly through the SHERLOC instrument for Mars habitability and…
Closed-loop In Situ Isolation Of Deep-sea Extremophiles Through Sensor-driven Microenvironment Preservation
[Nature Sensors] Deep sea microorganisms remain largely inaccessible because existing sampling and cultivation methods fail to preserve native high-pressure microenvironments from seafloor to laboratory. Here…
SkyFall Astrogeology/Astrobiology Droids Will Survey Mars
[NASA]. Equipped with four instruments each, the three SkyFall Mars helicopters helicopters will follow in the footsteps of the agency’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, a technology…
Imaging & Spectroscopy
Spectral Evolution Of Ceres’ Surface and Implications For Space Weathering
[astro-ph.EP] The surface of Ceres exposed to the space environment will be gradually altered, but the evolution of its spectral properties remains poorly understood. Here…
High Water D/H Ratio of the Interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is Consistent With a Low-metallicity Origin
[astro-ph.EP] Recent JWST observations have revealed unusually high 12C/13C ratios in carbon-bearing molecules of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, consistent with formation in a lower-metallicity environment…
WINERED Detects a Strong Atmospheric Outflow on the Sub-Neptune GJ 3090b
[astro-ph.EP] Sub-Neptunes are the most common short-period (P<100 d) planets known. A major goal for the field is to build a comprehensive understanding of their…
Biosignatures & Paleobiology
PlainMap: A Lightweight, Restartable Mapping Pipeline For Ancient And Modern DNA
[q-bio.GN] Mapping sequencing reads to a reference genome requires preprocessing and alignment choices that can vary with library type, fragment length, sequencing platform, and reference…
Deep Shifts In Evolutionary Rate Trajectories Of Ancient Bacterial Genes
[biorxiv.org] Reconstruction of ancestral gene repertoires from extant genomes captures only the genes that survived; those lost from the record are invisible. Among the genes…
Atmospheric Microbial Transport to Antarctica and Its Ecological Implications: A Systematic Review
[Environmental Microbiology] Atmospheric transport is hypothesized to be the primary vector connecting isolated Antarctic terrestrial habitats to global microbial pools, yet the mechanisms governing this…