support life tagged posts

Despite its uniquely rich inventory of organic molecules, Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, may be able to support only a minuscule amount of biomass, if life exists on the moon, according to a study using bioenergetic modeling.

Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is a strange, alien world. Covered in rivers and lakes of liquid methane, icy boulders and dunes of soot-like “sand,” its topography has long fascinated scientists and invited speculation on whether lifeforms might lurk beneath the moon’s thick, hazy atmosphere.

An international team of researchers co-led by Antonin Affholder at the U of A Department of Ec...

Venus approaches the Sun in a 2012 transit visible from Earth. Credit: NASA

A team of researchers with NASA, Uppsala University, Columbia University and the Planetary Science Institute has created several simulations of conditions on Venus billions of years ago using Earth climate models and has found some instances that suggest the planet may at one time have been capable of harboring life.

Venus is extraordinarily hot, volcanically active and has an atmosphere that is mostly carbon dioxide. But the simulations created by the research team suggest it may not have always been that way. They started with the idea that Venus and Earth were probably similar billions of years ago—a time when Earth’s atmosphere was also mostly carbon dioxide...