biosignatures tagged posts

Exoplanets are common in our galaxy, and some even orbit in the so-called habitable zone of their star. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has been busy observing a few of these small, potentially habitable planets, and astronomers are now hard at work analyzing Webb data. We invite Drs...

Scientists at UC Riverside are suggesting something is missing from the typical roster of chemicals that astrobiologists use to search for life on planets around other stars — laughing gas.

Chemical compounds in a planet’s atmosphere that could indicate life, called biosignatures, typically include gases found in abundance in Earth’s atmosphere today.

“There’s been a lot of thought put into oxygen and methane as biosignatures. Fewer researchers have seriously considered nitrous oxide, but we think that may be a mistake,” said Eddie Schwieterman, an astrobiologist in UCR’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

This conclusion, and the modeling work that led to it,...

A new class of exoplanet very different to our own, but which could support life, has been identified by astronomers, which could greatly accelerate the search for life outside our Solar System.

In the search for life elsewhere, astronomers have mostly looked for planets of a similar size, mass, temperature and atmospheric composition to Earth. However, astronomers from the University of Cambridge believe there are more promising possibilities out there.

The researchers have identified a new class of habitable planets, dubbed ‘Hycean’ planets—hot, ocean-covered planets with hydrogen-rich atmospheres—which are more numerous and observable than Earth-like planets.

The researchers say the results, reported in The Astrophysical Journal, could mean that finding biosignatures o...

This is an artist’s impression based on published scientific data on the HR 8799 solar system. The magenta, HR 8799c planet is in the foreground. Compared to Jupiter, this gas giant is about seven times more massive and has a radius that is 20 percent larger. HR 8799c’s planetary companions, d and b are in the background, orbiting their host star. Credit: W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko/C. Alvarez

Researchers are perfecting technology to one day look for signs of alien life. Astronomers have gleaned some of the best data yet on the composition of a planet known as HR 8799c – a young giant gas planet about 7 times the mass of Jupiter that orbits its star every 200 years.

The team used state-of-the art instrumentation at the W. M...