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Direct Dating Of 3.5 Ga Biogenic Carbon In A Microbial Mat Remnant, Singhbhum Craton, India
[PNAS]. Kerogen, insoluble organic matter preserved in sediments, represents some of the earliest known terrestrial biosignatures which have provided important insights into the origin of life and planetary habitability. Direct dating of these materials can be complicated by the lack of suitable geochronometers, instead relying on indirect constraints from, for example, the age of cross…
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The VLA and High-Frequency SETI: Expanding The Search for Life
[astro-ph.IM] The Commensal Open-Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster (COSMIC) runs software that searches for technologies elsewhere…
GEMS JWST: HATS(-6 b): A Sub-solar Metallicity Giant Planet With Water, Methane And Ammonia In Its Atmosphere
[astro-ph.EP] HATS-6 b is one of several recently discovered Giant Exoplanets orbiting M-dwarf Stars (GEMS)…
The Tidal Venus Phenomenon: Demographics and Case Studies
[astro-ph.EP] The demographics of terrestrial planets and their orbits reveal a vast diversity in overall…
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
Metal Deposits Linked To Oceanic Oxygen Loss During Ancient Ice Ages
[Syracuse University] An international team of researchers analyzed manganese and other chemical signatures preserved in more than 27,000 ancient seafloor samples collected from six continents. Across six major glaciations spanning more than two billion years, they found the same pattern: sediments from high latitudes consistently contained more manganese than those from tropical regions. The researchers…
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Offworld Astrogeology Training In Iceland
Iceland’s diverse volcanic terrain is an excellent stand-in for lunar and planetary processes and provides an ideal environment in which to simulate surface science operations.…
Planetary Recon: Interworld Slingshot Resource Surveys
[NASA] This proposal explores a new class of reconnaissance spacecraft that map minerals from orbit using Raman spectroscopy during high-speed flybys–without landing, sample return, or…
Preparing ExoMars For Rosalind Franklin Astrobiology Rover Delivery
[ESA] The footage shows the simultaneous deployment of two landing legs from the ExoMars landing platform, in two sequential pairs. The legs travel stowed on…
Imaging & Spectroscopy
A Mars Impact Crater Surrounded By Chunks Of Water Ice
[NASA] Boulder-size blocks of water ice can be seen around the rim of this giant meteoroid impact crater on Mars, as viewed by the High-Resolution…
Catalytic Formation of H2 On Carbonaceous Dust Grains – Implications For Interstellar Observations
[astro-ph.GA] We use kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations to study molecular hydrogen formation on carbonaceous dust grain surfaces, validated against recent laboratory measurements of H2…
The Enceladian Crater Production Function
[astro-ph.EP]. Interpreting Enceladus’s past and present surface history and interior state remains challenging, owing to uncertain prescription of its impact bombardment history and limited interpretation…
Biosignatures & Paleobiology
Human-Related Microbes May Survive At The Moon’s South Pole
[NASA] Some of Earth’s microbes likely to hitch a ride to space with human explorers could survive in the shaded nooks and crannies of the…
Extremophiles: Life Resists Chemistry Not Conditions
[FEMS Microbes] Extremophiles are used to study both the limits of life and its potential elsewhere. Categories are commonly employed to describe extreme conditions, however,…
Metagenomics Deciphers Diagenetic Processes Of Ferruginous Mineralization In The Deep Biosphere
[Nature Communications Earth & Environment] Ferruginous conditions in the Precambrian oceans gave rise to ancient iron formations that contain the oldest recognized traces of life…