No Plate Tectonics? No Problem, Says Life
On Earth, long-term geochemical cycling facilitated by plate tectonics is argued to be the most significant factor for habitability. Plate tectonics allows heat to move from the mantle into the […]
On Earth, long-term geochemical cycling facilitated by plate tectonics is argued to be the most significant factor for habitability. Plate tectonics allows heat to move from the mantle into the […]
The search for extraterrestrial life and habitable planets revolves around the search for water since water is essential to all forms of life. One place to look for water is […]
The Cassini-Huygens joint NASA/European Space Agency (ESA)/Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) mission surveyed Saturn and its moons, including Enceladus, its sixth-largest moon. This mission led to the discovery of a hydrothermally […]
With the launch of NASA’s JWST, the hunt for near-Earth-sized exoplanets in the Habitable Zones of stars is heating up. The Habitable Zone (HZ) is defined as the zone around […]
Whether ancient Mars harbored life has tantalized scientists and the public for more than a century. Today the surface of Mars is cold and dry, inhospitable to life as we […]
In the age of exoplanet discovery, most planets found have either been large gaseous giants or large terrestrial planets orbiting very close to their stars. Both types of planets are […]
Early in martian history, the climate was warm enough for potentially habitable lakes and rivers of water to exist. However, roughly 3.6 billion years ago, the climate shifted from being […]
The Allan Hills 84001 (ALH 84001) martian meteorite is an approximately four billion-year-old igneous rock composed primarily of the mineral orthopyroxene. It was discovered in Antarctica in 1984 and subsequently […]
Impact cratering is a ubiquitous geologic process in the solar system. This has important implications for planetary habitability because of the role of impacts in mass extinction events on Earth. […]
The search for signs of life on exoplanets relies heavily on our ability to detect key biosignatures within a given planet’s atmosphere. Among potential markers for life in exoplanet atmospheres, […]
Episode 34: Aired on August 11thEpisode 34 of Ask An Astrobiologist Please join us as we welcome Dr. Jacob Haqq-Misra, a research scientist at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science! […]
Magnetic fields around planetary bodies are important factors for understanding the habitability of other worlds because they reduce atmospheric loss and protect the surface of the planet from radiation. The […]