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SwRI Study Found Primordial Mini-moons May Explain Meteorite Composition
[SwRI] A new Southwest Research Institute-led study proposes a solution to a long-standing puzzle in planetary science — what caused the concentration, assembly and preservation of millimeter-sized, spherical mineral grains within the parent bodies of the most common meteorites? Chondritic asteroids are ancient bodies that orbit the Sun, while a chondrite meteorite is a rocky…
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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…
Researchers Confirm The Cause Of Earth’s Biggest Mass Extinction
[Stanford University] A new Stanford-led study offers the clearest picture yet of how some ocean…
Multistage Rocket Optimization, Geophysics, and the Spacefaring Envelope of Habitable Super-Earths
[astro-ph.EP] Habitability is typically defined by whether a planet can support life, rather than whether…
The Recent Crossing Of The 7:3 Resonance Between Ganymede And Callisto
[astro-ph.EP] Io, Europa and Ganymede are locked in the well-known Laplace resonance, while Callisto is…
Diverse Organic Molecules Discovered Surrounding A Newly Formed Star
[Niigata University] For the first time, astronomers have discovered stellar cocoons rich in complex organic…
Older Than The Sun: Astronomers Find New Clues To The Origin Of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS
[ESO] Astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) to study…
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
Orbital Biosignature Assay: Phytoplankton Blooms In The Black Sea
[NASA] The turquoise color is likely caused by coccolithophores, a type of phytoplankton covered with calcium carbonate plates that can give surface waters a milky-blue appearance. These types of phytoplankton tend to dominate in late spring and early summer. Other times of the year, diatoms—a type of microscopic algae with silica shells—can become more prevalent,…
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 Expeditions: Alvin Submersible Certified To Return To Service
Editor’s note: Submersibles and oceanic exploration have a long history of intersection and collaboration. NASA Astronaut Loral O’Hara was a research engineer at Woods Hole…
Ocean Planet Exploration: New University of Rhode Island Ocean Robotics Laboratory
[URI] The University of Rhode Island celebrated a major milestone in the $300 million, multi-phase revitalization of the Narragansett Bay Campus with a ribbon cutting…
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
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…
The Habitable Worlds Observatory Technology Development Plan
[astro-ph.IM] The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is NASA’s next large space telescope, selected by the 2020 Decadal Survey in Astronomy and Astrophysics to search for…