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What star meets the current best guesses for habitability? This fascinating question is part of an ongoing research survey, in preparation for NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder mission. The answer, according to the largest such classification so far attempted, is the 37th brightest star in the constellation, Gemini, called 37 Gem. This star, as it turns out, is the most like our own sun.
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Full story...
Thursday, October 09, 2003
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The most powerful computing network ever assembled is about to enter a new design phase. Drawing on the vast unused idle times of more than four and half million home computers, SETI@home currently gets about 15 TeraFLOPs and has cost $500K so far, compared to a typical $100+ million required for high-end supercomputing. The next generation of the SETI backbone, called BOINC for the "Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing" , is designed to make it easier for other projects to generalize this unique science architecture.
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Full story...
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
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Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute examines the revolution that the astronomer Galileo brought to the world by discovering moons around another planet. This changed what otherwise had persisted as a worldview since Aristotle placed Earth in the center of it the universe. As Galileo's namesake satellite itself crashed into Jupiter last week, one is reminded of one of its most intriguing findings: the close-up views of the Jovian lunar surfaces--Europa, Callisto and Io.
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Friday, October 03, 2003
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Renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks is the author of many books, including "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" and "Uncle Tungsten". In this first of a two-part essay on astrobiology, Dr. Sacks discusses his early fascination with the possibility of life on other worlds and the beginnings of life on Earth.
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Thursday, October 02, 2003
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Duplicating the harsh conditions of space in their laboratory, NASA scientists have created primitive cells with membrane-like structures. These chemical compounds may have played a part in the origin of life.
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Wednesday, October 01, 2003
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Some of Earth's oldest rocks contain intriguing layered structures. Were living organisms responsible, or was it merely a random chemical process? The answer, says one researcher, may be a simple matter of compressing a computer file.
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Tuesday, September 30, 2003
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Selected from tens of thousands of questions posed to Astrobiology Magazine, the best ones are culled in a reader dialog that helps guide new areas to explore. Key questions continue to center on some of the most extreme conditions on earth, and the chances for liquid water elsewhere.
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Full story...
Monday, September 29, 2003
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Ann Druyan, the widow of renowned scientist Carl Sagan, and astrophysicist Steven Soter collaborated with Sagan over many years to create the famed television series Cosmos and numerous other projects. Druyan and Soter's latest collaborative project, The Search for Life: Are We Alone? screens at the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York. Narrated by Harrison Ford, the space show simulates a walk on Mars, a flyby of Jupiter's moon Europa, and other excursions with breathtaking realism. According to the New York Times, "the visuals of the Martian landscape surround the audience and create the feeling that, with a step or two, one could be out strolling among the rocks and dust of another world. The illusion is stunning." The Associated Press says, "It's quite a ride." In this interview with Astrobiology at NASA executive producer Kathleen Connell, Druyan and Soter discuss a range of subjects, such as how they depicted the possibilities of life beyond Earth, what the discovery of extraterrestrial life could mean for humanity, and what it was like to work alongside Carl Sagan.
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Sunday, September 28, 2003
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The terrestrial neighborhood is rich with both extremes of hot and cold, depending on whether one looks to Venus or Mars. Whether Venus has too much atmosphere or whether Mars has too little determines whether they rank as hospitable or hostile.
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Full story...
Saturday, September 27, 2003
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Estimating the frequency for communicating with an extrasolar civilization is a multi-dimensional challenge. The answer, according to two scientists at the Hungarian Astronomical Association, is less like an equation, and more like a matrix.
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Full story...
Friday, September 26, 2003
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User's Login |
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Past Articles |
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| Thursday, September 25 |
| · | Complex Life Elsewhere in the Universe? Great Debates: Part I |
| Wednesday, September 24 |
| · | The Meaning of Life |
| Tuesday, September 23 |
| · | Murchison's Amino Acids: Tainted Evidence? |
| Monday, September 22 |
| · | The Search for Life in the Universe |
| Sunday, September 21 |
| · | Stellar Countdown Yields Skymap |
| Saturday, September 20 |
| · | Search for Life in the Universe II |
| Friday, September 19 |
| · | SETI and the Search for Life |
| Thursday, September 18 |
| · | Search for Life in the Universe I |
| Wednesday, September 17 |
| · | Are We Alone? Where are our Nearest Neighbors? |
| Tuesday, September 16 |
| · | Primordial Recipe: Spark and Stir |
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Ephemerids |
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On a day like today...
1888
John J Loud patents ballpoint pen
1937
The closest approach to the earth by an asteroid, Hermes, was measured to be 485,000 miles.
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