Context. Terrestrial exoplanets are expected to host secondary, high-metallicity atmospheres derived from outgassing of volatiles such as N2, CO2, H2O, CH4, and CO. Photochemical organic hazes are likely to form […]
One of the frontier research fields of exoplanetary science is the study of the composition and variability of exoplanetary atmospheres.
Researchers from the University of Bern, in collaboration with the University of Science and Technology Houari Boumediene in Algeria, have made significant progress in astrobiology. In a recently published study, […]
In Star Trek, the intrepid explorers use a handheld device called a tricorder to sense, record and compute environmental data. But scientists in the real world have one-upped our fictional friends […]
Editor’s note: as we send increasingly sophisticated astrobiology probes – to more places – often at much greater distances – they will need to be able to do more and […]
In the search for life in space, scientists have studied life in some of the earth’s most extreme environments.
Iron is a micronutrient indispensable for life, enabling processes such as respiration, photosynthesis, and DNA synthesis. Iron availability is often a limiting resource in today’s oceans, which means that increasing […]
Urea is hypothesized to be an important source of nitrogen and chemical energy to microorganisms in the deep sea; however, direct evidence for urea use below the epipelagic ocean is […]
The Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) is a micro-focus X-ray fluorescence spectrometer mounted on the robotic arm of NASA’s Perseverance rover.
The Cassini mission provided evidence for a global subsurface ocean and ongoing hydrothermal activity on Enceladus, based on results from Cassini’s mass spectrometers. Laboratory simulations of hydrothermal conditions on icy […]
