Category Astronomy/Space

Spectroscopy reveals elements such as gallium in a bacterial sample taken from silica in Yellowstone National Park. (Andrew Gangidine)

Geologists are looking for an elemental biosignature that might help NASA identify life on the red planet during the Mars 2020 rover mission. Doctoral candidate Andrew Gangidine is working with UC geology professor Andrew Czaja to develop a marker for ancient bacterial life on Mars. The research could help scientists put to rest one of our most fundamental mysteries. “We’re trying to answer the question: How rare is life in the universe?” Gangidine said.

Czaja, an assistant professor in UC’s McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, serves on a NASA advisory committee that will decide where on Mars to send the next remote-controlled rover...

Though Mercury may look drab to the human eye, different minerals appear in a rainbow of colors in this image from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University APL/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Mercury’s crust is thinner than anyone thought, new mathematical calculations reveal. A planetary scientist has used careful mathematical calculations to determine the density of Mercury’s crust, which is thinner than anyone thought. Mercury is small, fast and close to the sun, making the rocky world challenging to visit. Only one probe has ever orbited the planet and collected enough data to tell scientists about the chemistry and landscape of Mercury’s surface. Learning about what is beneath the surface, however, requires careful estimation.

After the probe’s mission end...

Star forming region (Pillars of Creation) in the Eagle Nebula. Low-energy electrons, created in matter by space radiation (e.g., galactic cosmic rays, GCR, etc.), can induce formation of glycine (2HN-CH2-COOH) in astrophysical molecular ices; here, icy grains of interstellar dust (or ices on planetary satellites) are simulated by ammonia, methane and carbon dioxide condensed at 20 K on Pt in UHV, and irradiated by 0-70 eV LEEs. Credit: NASA, Hubble, STScI

New research offers evidence that humans – and the rest of life on Earth – may have been able to form with the right combination of star dust and radiation...

The bottom-most layer of the moon’s mantle melts to form a metal-rich “basal magma ocean” that sits on top of the moon’s metal core. Convection in this layer may have driven a dynamo, creating a magnetic field which would have been recorded at the surface by the cooling lunar crust, including the samples brought back by Apollo astronauts. Credit: Aaron Scheinberg

Around 4 billion years ago, the Moon had a magnetic field that was about as strong as Earth’s magnetic field is today. How the Moon, with a much smaller core than Earth’s, could have had such a strong magnetic field has been an unsolved problem in the history of the Moon’s evolution...