In a new study published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, scientists funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) advance a theory about life’s origins based on the […]
Earth
Posted inHabitable Zones
Ozone Holes Might Slightly Warm Our Planet
A lot of people mix up the ozone hole and global warming, believing the hole is a major cause of the world’s increasing average temperature. Scientists, on the other hand, […]
Posted inAstrobiology (general), Habitable Zones, Press Release
How Early Earth Kept Warm Enough to Support Life
Solving the “faint young Sun paradox” — explaining how early Earth was warm and habitable for life beginning more than 3 billion years ago even though the Sun was 20 […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
Transmission spectrum of Earth as a transiting exoplanet
Transmission spectroscopy of exoplanets is a tool to characterize rocky planets and explore their habitability. Using the Earth itself as a proxy, we model the atmospheric cross section as a […]
Posted inExoplanets, -moons, -comets
How to Distinguish between Cloudy Mini-Neptunes and Water/Volatile-Dominated Super-Earths
One of the most profound questions about the newly discovered class of low-density super-Earths is whether these exoplanets are predominately H2-dominated mini-Neptunes or volatile-rich worlds with gas envelopes dominated by […]
Posted inHabitable Zones
How close is Earth to a runaway greenhouse?
Recent calculations suggest that the inner edge of the habitable zone around the Sun could be as far out as 0.99 astronomical units (AU)- much closer to the orbit of […]
Posted inBiogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Habitable Zones
The Hadean Earth-Moon System – Workshop Without Walls
Please join us for the NAI Early Earth Focus Group Workshop Without Walls on “The Hadean Earth-Moon System”. The workshop is aimed at providing the most up-to-date science on the […]
Posted inMeteorites & Asteroids, Press Release
Water on the Moon and Earth Came From The Same Primitive Meteorites
The water found on the moon, like that on Earth, came from small meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites in the first 100 million years or so after the solar system formed, […]
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
An Oxygen-poor ‘Boring’ Ocean Challenged Evolution of Early Life
A research team led by biogeochemists at the University of California, Riverside has filled in a billion-year gap in our understanding of conditions in the early ocean during a critical […]