Keith’s update: Dale Andersen sent an update overnight update to me: “First night at Untersee. All is well after yesterday’s traverse. Now it’s time to get shelter in place – […]
Origin & Evolution of Life
Posted inPlant Biology
Deep Evolutionary History Of Land Plants’ Closest Algal Relatives
[University of Göttingen] What did the algae that gave rise to the first land plants look like?
Posted inExtremeophiles and Extreme Environments
Microbes Can Grow In Mars-like Conditions. What That Means For The Search For Life
[University of Florida] A new experiment reveals that Earth’s microbes can grow in harsh conditions similar to what may exist just below the surface of Mars, suggesting new directions in […]
Posted inComets and Asteroids
Cometary Impacts An Unlikely Pathway Towards The Origins Of Life On Earth
[astro-ph.EP] An early period of cometary bombardment has long been speculated to provide an important source of prebiotic feedstock molecules, required for the origins of life on Earth.
Posted inDale Andersen's Field Reports
Astrobiologist Dale Andersen’s Antarctic Field Report: 5 November 2026: Traverse to Lake Untersee
Keith’s note: after a routine traverse along the standard route from Ultima Airbase, Dale Andersen and his team arrived at their base camp location at Lake Untersee, Antarctica. Dale sent […]
Posted inOrigin & Evolution of Life
Can A Self-sustaining Chemical Network Emerge Due To Just A Few Catalysts?
[q-bio.MN] Understanding how self-sustaining chemical reaction networks can emerge from simple molecules is an important question in chemical approaches to the origin of life. Reflexively autocatalytic and food-generated (RAF) sets […]
Posted inAstrogeology
Earth’s Geological Record Is Missing Hundreds Of Millions of years. UOW Scientists Think They Know Why
[University of Wollongong] Research led by a University of Wollongong (UOW) PhD candidate may have solved one of Earth’s most perplexing geological mysteries – what caused the Great Unconformity?
Posted inGenomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics
A Mitochondrion-like Ribosome In An Insect Endosymbiont
[biorxiv.org] Understanding how the mitochondrion evolved from a bacterial endosymbiont to an organelle is obscured by time and a lack of comparative examples.
Posted inHabitable Zones
A Whole-Earth Simulation Built To Help Find Life On Other Planets
[University of Washington] It’s a dizzyingly busy time for scientists searching for life on distant planets. To date, astronomers have cataloged more than 6,000 planets beyond our solar system and […]
Posted inVenus
Communicating The Uncertainty Of Extraterrestrial Life: How The News Media Portrayed The Contested Phosphine Detection On Venus
[International Journal of Astrobiology]. The contested 2020 report of phosphine in Venus’s atmosphere triggered one of the most prominent recent debates in astrobiology, raising the possibility of extraterrestrial life while […]