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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Life on Venus? Probe mission could search Venus clouds for unexplained hydrogen-rich gases

    July 11, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Life on Venus? UK probe could reveal the answer
    An artist’s impression of the proposed VERVE mission to Venus the answer whether tiny bacterial lifeforms really do exist in the planet’s clouds. Credit: Danielle Futselaar

    The answer to whether tiny bacterial life-forms really do exist in the clouds of Venus could be revealed once and for all by a UK-backed mission.

    Over the past five years, researchers have detected the presence of two potential biomarkers—the gases phosphine and ammonia—which on Earth can only be produced by biological activity and industrial processes.

    Their existence in the Venusian clouds cannot easily be explained by known atmospheric or geological phenomena, so Cardiff University’s Professor Jane Greaves and her team are plotting a way to get to the bottom of it.

    Revealing a new mission concept at ...

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    Astronomers Catch Planets in the Act of Being Born

    July 10, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An artist’s impression of dust and tiny grains in a protoplanetary disc surrounding a young star (left) alongside an e-MERLIN map showing the tilted disc structure around the young star DG Tauri (top right) and the HL Tau disc captured by e-MERLIN is shown overlaid on an ALMA image, revealing both the compact emission from the central region of the disc and the larger scale dust rings (bottom right).
    An artist’s impression of dust and tiny grains in a protoplanetary disc surrounding a young star (left) alongside an e-MERLIN map showing the tilted disc structure around the young star DG Tauri (top right) and the HL Tau disc captured by e-MERLIN is shown overlaid on an ALMA image, revealing both the compact emission from the central region of the disc and the larger scale dust rings (bottom right).

    Credit
    NASA/JPL-Caltech/Hesterly, Drabek-Maunder, Greaves, Richards, et al./Greaves, Hesterly, Richards, and et al./ALMA partnership et al.
    Licence type
    Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

    Astronomers have spotted centimeter-sized “pebbles” swirling around two infant stars 450 light-years away, revealing the raw ingredients of planets already stretching to Neptune-like orbits...

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    A new way to wobble: Scientists uncover mechanism that causes formation of planets

    July 9, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An artist’s concept of a supermassive black
    An artist’s concept of a supermassive black hole surrounded by an accretion disk. (Illustration courtesy of NASA)

    Instead of a tempest in a teapot, imagine the cosmos in a canister. Scientists have performed experiments using nested, spinning cylinders to confirm that an uneven wobble in a ring of electrically conductive fluid like liquid metal or plasma causes particles on the inside of the ring to drift inward. Since revolving rings of plasma also occur around stars and black holes, these new findings imply that the wobbles can cause matter in those rings to fall toward the central mass and form planets.

    The scientists found that the wobble could grow in a new, unexpected way...

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    Why is there no life on Mars? Rover finds a clue

    July 7, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Despite brief oases, Mars was likely doomed to be a desert planet, a new study suggests
    Despite brief oases, Mars was likely doomed to be a desert planet, a new study suggests.

    Why is Mars barren and uninhabitable, while life has always thrived here on our relatively similar planet Earth?

    A discovery made by a NASA rover has offered a clue for this mystery, new research said Wednesday, suggesting that while rivers once sporadically flowed on Mars, it was doomed to mostly be a desert planet.

    Mars is thought to currently have all the necessary ingredients for life except for perhaps the most important one: liquid water.

    However, the red surface is carved out by ancient rivers and lakes, showing that water once flowed on our nearest neighbor.

    There are currently several rovers searching Mars for signs of life that could have existed back in those more habitable t...

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