Gaia - Planetary Perspectives Archives - Page 18 of 36

Target planet selection and terraformation. A. The objective function, used for determining the destination of life from a terraformed “parent” planet. Candidate destinations are first constrained by a maximum positional distance threshold; among these candidates, the planet closest in composition to the parent planet is chosen as the target. B. Simulations are initialized with 1 origin of life, causing the initial distribution of planet compositions (seen in A) to become correlated. C. An example of how we determine target planet composition when retaining 10% of the preterraformed planet composition. Note that while our simulations use a 3D space, the concept figure shows only show a 2D space for clarity. -- astro-ph.EP

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Panspermia, Status Report, Terraforming & Geoengineering

An Agnostic Biosignature Based on Modeling Panspermia and Terraformation

by Keith CowingApril 14, 2025March 3, 2026

A fundamental goal of astrobiology is to detect life outside of Earth. This proves to be an exceptional challenge outside of our solar system, where strong assumptions must be made […]

Bee swarm plot of the seven features considered. The x-axis represents the SHAP value of the feature for each instance, and the y-axis represents the seven features considered ranked from the most important (top) to the least (bottom). The colour of the dots represents the value of the feature itself, red being high values and blue being low values. -- astro-ph.EP

AI - Data - Apps - Cybernetics, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Habitable Zones, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Earth-like Planet Predictor: A Machine Learning Approach

by Keith CowingApril 11, 2025April 11, 2025

Searching for planets analogous to Earth in terms of mass and equilibrium temperature is currently the first step in the quest for habitable conditions outside our Solar System and, ultimately, […]

Reconstruction of a late Maastrichtian (~66 million years ago) palaeoenvironment in North America, where a floodplain is roamed by dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex, Edmontosaurus annectens and Triceratops prorsus Credit Davide Bonadonna (www.davidebonadonna.it)

Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extinction events, Fossils & Paleontology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Impact events, Press Release

Dinosaurs’ Apparent Decline Prior To Asteroid May Be Due To A Poor Fossil Record

by Keith CowingApril 10, 2025April 10, 2025

The idea that dinosaurs were already in decline before an asteroid wiped most of them out 66 million years ago may be explained by a worsening fossil record from that […]

Global distribution of serpentinization-influenced environments that have been investigated microbiologically and those that hosted 70 publicly available shotgun metagenomes used in the meta-analysis of this review. Geologic systems are indicated by points and abbreviations on the map, with those in green hosting metagenomes that were used in the meta-analysis of this review. Bottom left insert shows the pH distribution of water samples from which the metagenomes were derived, as reported by the original publication. Additional information for metagenomes is shown in Supplementary Table 1. Abbreviations are defined as follows (and further identified in Supplementary Table 1). NEY: Ney Springs; CED: The Cedars; CROMO: Coast Range Ophiolite Microbial Observatory; SEO: Santa Elena Ophiolite; TBL: Tablelands Ophiolite; RHF: Rainbow Hydrothermal Field; LCHF: Lost City Hydrothermal Field; LVF: Logatchev Vent Field; AVF: Ashadze Vent Field; AUR: Aurora Seamount; LEKA: Leka Ophiolite; CDV: Cabeço de Vide; VOL: Voltri Massif; YAN: Yanartaş; ALL: Allas Springs; SAM: Samail Ophiolite; KMR: Khalilovsky Massif; KHF: Karei Hydrothermal Field; OCHF: Old City Hydrothermal Field; HHS: Hakuba Happo Hot Springs; MAN: Manleluag Spring; LCR: La Crouen Spring; PBHF: Prony Bay Hydrothermal Field. -- ISME via PubMed

Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Fossils & Paleontology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Origin & Evolution of Life, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Microbial Ecology Of Serpentinite-hosted Ecosystems

by Keith CowingApril 8, 2025April 8, 2025

Serpentinization, the collective set of geochemical reactions initiated by the hydration of ultramafic rock, has occurred throughout Earth history and is inferred to occur on several planets and moons in […]

A diagram showing the evolutionary history from an aquatic organism and adaptive traits of CSP1-3 phylum for each habitat.-- Michigan State University

Analog Studies, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microbiology & Virology, Nomenclature, Systematics, Natural History, Press Release

New Microbes Discovered Deep In Earth’s Soil

by Keith CowingApril 8, 2025April 8, 2025

Leonardo da Vinci once said, “We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot.”

Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

An Informational–Entropic Approach To Exoplanet Characterization

by Keith CowingApril 7, 2025April 7, 2025

In the past, measures of the “Earth-likeness” of exoplanets have been qualitative, considering an abiotic Earth, or requiring discretionary choices of what parameters make a planet Earth-like.

The Permian is a geologic period and system which extends from 298.9 ± 0.2 to 252.2 ± 0.5 (Million years ago). The Permian–Triassic (P–Tr or P–T) extinction event formed the boundary between the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras. It is the Earth’s most severe known extinction event, with up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct. -- NOAA

Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extinction events, Fossils & Paleontology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Press Release

How Survivors Spanned The Globe After Earth’s Biggest Mass Extinction

by Keith CowingApril 4, 2025April 4, 2025

Scientists don’t call it the “Great Dying” for nothing. About 252 million years ago, upward of 80% of all marine species vanished during the end-Permian mass extinction – the most […]

Schematic of a canonical habitable zone for terrestrial planets around main sequence stars. The inner and outer edges of the HZ, shown in blue, correspond to the moist greenhouse limit and the maximum greenhouse limit, respectively (Kasting et al., 1993; Kopparapu et al., 2013). The solar system planets and several exoplanets are shown for reference. Image Credits: Chester Harman.

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Habitable Zones, Status Report

Habitability and Biosignatures

by Keith CowingApril 1, 2025

The search for life beyond the solar system is a central goal in exoplanetary science. Exoplanet surveys are increasingly detecting potentially habitable exoplanets and large telescopes in space and on […]