Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography Archives

That time Spock talked to a humpback whale -- Paramount

Intelligence & Language, Press Release, SETI & Technosignatures, Societal Issues, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Whale-SETI: Groundbreaking Encounter With Humpback Whales Reveals Potential For Nonhuman Intelligence communication

by Keith CowingDecember 12, 2023December 12, 2023

A team of scientists from the SETI Institute, University of California Davis and the Alaska Whale Foundation, had a close encounter with a non-human (aquatic) intelligence.

Elemental ratios providing information on the relative abundance of nitrogen compared to water for Pluto and Triton. This is compared to the solar abundances, abundances observed in Jupiter’s atmosphere, and analogs for solid materials in the PSN. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Icy Worlds, Pluto, Status Report, Triton, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Surface Volatile Composition as Evidence for Hydrothermal Processes Lasting Longer in Triton’s Interior Than Pluto’s

by Keith CowingDecember 12, 2023December 12, 2023

Ocean worlds, or icy bodies in the outer solar system that have or once had subsurface liquid water oceans, are among the most compelling topics of astrobiology. Typically, confirming the […]

Proposed explanations to Titan’s large k2 as observed by Cassini. The schematic of Titan’s interior model has been extracted from de Kleer et al. (2019). -- astro-ph.EP

Icy Worlds, Status Report, Titan, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Resonant Stratification In Titan’s Global Ocean

by Keith CowingDecember 11, 2023December 11, 2023

Titan’s ice shell floats on top of a global ocean revealed by the large tidal Love number k2=0.616±0.067 registered by Cassini. The Cassini observation exceeds the predicted k2 by one […]

Away Teams & Field Reports, Exploration Gear & Tech, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Robotics/Rovers/UAVs, ROVs/Submersibles/Diving, Status Report, Video, Audio, Webcasts, Podcasts, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Video: Ocean World Exploration: Seafloor Mapping In 60 Seconds

by Keith CowingDecember 11, 2023December 11, 2023

Editor’s note: we’re sending two missions to the Jovian System to study ice-covered ocean worlds – worlds that may contain life. How we explore and chart Earth’s oceans and its […]

Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor Testing -- NASA

Away Teams & Field Reports, Caves, Craters, Mountains, Subsurface, Lava Tubes, Cryobiology, Exploration Gear & Tech, Icy Worlds, Robotics/Rovers/UAVs, ROVs/Submersibles/Diving, Status Report, Video, Audio, Webcasts, Podcasts, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

CBC Interview With Morgan Cable: Robot Snakes In Space? NASA Is Testing Them On An Alberta Glacier

by Keith CowingDecember 10, 2023December 10, 2023

NASA’s Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor, EELS for short, is a futuristic-looking, modular ‘snake,’ designed to explore deep space.

Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Cryobiology, Enceladus, Europa, Exploration Gear & Tech, Icy Worlds, Missions & Hardware, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Can Signs Of Life Be Detected On Enceladus?

by Keith CowingDecember 6, 2023December 6, 2023

As astrophysics technology and research continue to advance, one question persists: is there life elsewhere in the universe? The Milky Way galaxy alone has hundreds of billions of celestial bodies, […]

Digging Deeper to Find Life on Ocean Worlds - Conceptual image of a cryobot breaching into the ocean of Europa and searching for signs of life. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Arctic / Antarctic / Alpine, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Cryobiology, Enceladus, Europa, Exploration Gear & Tech, Icy Worlds, Missions & Hardware, Press Release, Reports, Roadmaps, & Plans, Robotics/Rovers/UAVs, ROVs/Submersibles/Diving, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

NASA Studies Cryobots To Explore Ocean Worlds

by Keith CowingDecember 6, 2023December 6, 2023

In February 2023, researchers from around the country gathered at a NASA-sponsored workshop to discuss the latest developments and a roadmap for a cryobot mission concept to drill through the […]

Internal ocean probabilities of the investigated exoplanets. The colour bar depicts the probability of each planet having a liquid water reservoir in its interior. Red colours imply a high probability, while planets with dark blue circles are less likely to have internal oceans. The HZ, shown as a green band only for illustrative purposes, was calculated based on stellar parameters from theoretical stellar evolution models. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Proxima Centauri, Status Report, TRAPPIST-1, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Water Content Of Rocky Exoplanets In The Habitable Zone

by Keith CowingDecember 4, 2023December 4, 2023

In this study we investigated the interiors of rocky exoplanets in order to identify those that may have large quantities of water.

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Monitoring Ice World Surfaces From Orbit: Antarctic Iceberg Sails Away

by Keith CowingDecember 4, 2023December 3, 2023

Editor’s note: Prime targets for Astrobiology missions in the coming decades include ice-covered ocean worlds in the outer solar system such as Europa, Enceladus, Ganymede, Callisto, Mimas, Titan and others. […]

Illustration of the modeling combination between a Genome-Scale Model (GSM), i.e., Prochlorococcus MED4 GSM, and an Earth Systems Model (ESM), i.e., NEMO-PISCES, and comparison between growth rates estimated from ESM and GSM. a |From a metabolic network, we defined a solution space embedding all possible fluxes that go through each network reaction. These fluxes satisfy the quasi-steady states assumption and other thermodynamic constraints defined in the GSM. This set of constraints (C1) is defined as biotic constraints, and they affect inner reactions, as well as exchange reactions responsible for the uptake or secretion of nutrients, and a biomass reaction simulating the growth of the organism (color scale similar to panel d., see Appendix 1 for details). b |Earth Systems Models predict global ocean biogeochemistry across space and time. Here the ESM provides uptake fluxes of nutrients for each grid point for each modeled organism. In our framework, these uptake values are used as a set of constraints (C2) on the exchange reactions of the GSM. These are defined as the set of abiotic constraints that are applied in the model. c |C1 and C2 are combined to constrain further exchanged metabolite fluxes at each grid point of the global ocean. As a result, we can estimate the organismal growth rate and all feasible inner fluxes corresponding to a given environment as proposed by the ESM. d |Description of growth rates (h−1) at 5 m depth estimated from NEMO-PISCES picophytoplankton (top) and Prochlorococcus MED4 GSM (bottom). The dashed line shows the transect described in the following panel. e |Distribution of respective growth rates across latitudes and depths at longitude -24o. Grey areas indicate latitudes that do not allow Prochlorococcus MED4 growth because of thermal limits; the GSM does not consider them. The relationship between growth rates across space (above 500 m) and time (i.e., without gray areas) shows R2:0.80 and slope: 0.787 (see Extended Fig. 11). -- biorxiv.org

Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microbiology & Virology, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Modeling Genome-scale Knowledge In Earth’s Global Ocean

by Keith CowingDecember 4, 2023December 3, 2023

Editor’s note: As we make plans to do orbital and surface sorties on other worlds searching for life it is certainly useful to use Earth and its diverse biota as […]

Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Whale-SETI: Groundbreaking Encounter With Humpback Whales Reveals Potential For Nonhuman Intelligence communication

Surface Volatile Composition as Evidence for Hydrothermal Processes Lasting Longer in Triton’s Interior Than Pluto’s

Resonant Stratification In Titan’s Global Ocean

Video: Ocean World Exploration: Seafloor Mapping In 60 Seconds

CBC Interview With Morgan Cable: Robot Snakes In Space? NASA Is Testing Them On An Alberta Glacier

Can Signs Of Life Be Detected On Enceladus?

NASA Studies Cryobots To Explore Ocean Worlds

Water Content Of Rocky Exoplanets In The Habitable Zone

Monitoring Ice World Surfaces From Orbit: Antarctic Iceberg Sails Away

Modeling Genome-scale Knowledge In Earth’s Global Ocean

How High-pressure Ices On Large Ocean Worlds Can Support Habitability: The Compatibility Of Amino Acids Into Ice VI And VII

Ice Drives The Emergence Of Functional Protocells

Chemical Abundance Patterns at z=1-7: Carbon, Nitrogen, Neon, Sulphur, and Argon Abundances From JWST Spectroscopy

Optimization of Petal-Shaped Occulters for Exo-Earth Observation

Topographically Forced Stationary Waves Can Explain The Near-Surface Zonal Winds Observed By Huygens On Titan