biosignatures tagged posts

A new study co-authored by Texas A&M University geologist Dr. Michael Tice has revealed potential chemical signatures of ancient Martian microbial life in rocks examined by NASA’s Perseverance rover.

The findings, published by a large international team of scientists, focus on a region of Jezero Crater known as the Bright Angel formation—a name chosen from locations in Grand Canyon National Park because of the light-colored Martian rocks...

Data and images from NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover reveals that recently discovered rocks in Jezero crater are organic carbon bearing mudstones...

Currently, 5,788 exoplanets have been confirmed in 4,326 star systems, while thousands more candidates await confirmation. So far, the vast majority of these planets have been gas giants (3,826) or Super-Earths (1,735), while only 210 have been “Earth-like”—meaning rocky planets similar in size and mass to Earth.

What’s more, the majority of these planets have been discovered orbiting within M-type (red dwarf) star systems, while only a few have been found orbiting sun-like stars. Nevertheless, no Earth-like planets orbiting within a sun-like star’s habitable zone (HZ) have been discovered so far.

This is largely due to the limitations of existing observatories, which have been unable to resolve Earth-size...

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...