The search for exoplanet biosignatures is guided by whether planetary environments can sustain photosynthesis.
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NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Binaries Project
Some stars have planets. Others are orbited by brown dwarfs, balls of gas too massive to be planets, but too low-mass to be stars. Astronomers love these brown dwarf-star pairs […]
Long-Period Comets’ Orbits Reflect Close Passage by Star HD 7977
The Gaia mission has allowed researchers to understand the motions of stars like never before, even revealing possible interactions between our Solar System and nearby stars.
VLT Beyond 2030 and Call for White Papers
The VLT Beyond 2030 conference gathered participants from the community and ESO experts to present and discuss science and technological ideas for the future of both the Very Large Telescope […]
A Look At Eight Outbursts Of Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke
Cometary outbursts may be used as a means to infer the physical processes occurring on cometary nuclei. To that end, we studied eight outbursts of comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke identified between 2021 […]
Thermal And Rotational Effects Of Giant Impacts During Terrestrial Planet Accretion
Terrestrial planets likely experienced one or more giant impacts during their formation that inflicted large thermal, chemical, and rotational perturbations.
Ecophysiological Study Of Green Microalgae Isolated From The Grit Crust Of The Atacama Desert
Terrestrial algae play a critical, yet often overlooked, role in the functioning of biological soil crusts (biocrusts), which are considered microecosystems, particularly in extreme environments.
Hydrothermal Origin Of Metabolic Phosphorylation
Phosphate is central to modern bioenergetics and to all theories for the origin of life. How phosphate entered metabolism is unknown, though microbial physiology and geochemical environments can provide important […]
An Empirical Determination Of The Cosmic Shoreline
The cosmic shoreline concept was introduced to separate planets with atmospheres from those without, by relating the cumulative X-ray and extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) instellation (integrated over the planet’s lifetime) to the […]
Hot life in Antarctica: A Novel Metabolically Versatile Pyrodictiaceae Genus Thriving At A Volcanic–cryosphere–marine Interface
Deception Island fumaroles in Antarctica represent rare environments where extreme heat intersects with cryospheric and marine conditions, creating remarkable environmental gradients.
