INFORMATION

The search for life elsewhere focuses on biosignatures. These are chemicals in atmospheres that can only be attributed to life. But despite the prowess of the JWST, finding slam-dunk proof of life on other worlds is a confounding exercise. New research suggests that rather than focus on individual chemicals, we should look for statistical patterns. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/IjsDxp6 via IFTTT

When NASA's Artemis II spacecraft carried four astronauts around the Moon earlier this year, the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope was quietly watching from a quiet valley in West Virginia. The Green Bank Telescope tracked the Orion capsule across 213,000 miles of empty space with a precision that would embarrass most speedometers and what it produced isn't just an engineering triumph. It's a glimpse of how the world's most sensitive ears are becoming indispensable to the future of human spaceflight. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/Vf78jWX via IFTTT

You’re an anaerobic microbe sunbathing on a Martian beach billions of years ago listening to the small waves hit the shoreline as you take in the perchlorates in the Martian regolith. This is because while Mars is warm and wet, it still lacks sufficient oxygen, so anaerobic life like yourself doesn’t need oxygen to survive. You’re chilling for several hours and eventually notice the water hasn’t touched you. You remember over-hearing some otherworldly fellows who briefly landed and discussed the landscape didn’t look well formed, so they left. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/xDtAy4W via IFTTT

In 2025, a retreating glacier in Alaska caused a landslide into a fjord named Tracy Arm. The landslide triggered a tsunami that swept down the fjord into the ocean. The tsunami reached a height of more than 480 meters, the second highest tsunami ever recorded. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/RduLqPE via IFTTT

Jupiter, the gravitational behemoth that makes up a lion’s share of our solar system’s planetary content, is much more complicated than ever previously thought. Or so say leaders from NASA’s highly successful Juno mission. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/gXPWOnp via IFTTT

In February 2013, a 20 metre asteroid exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk without warning, injuring more than 1,600 people and releasing energy equivalent to 33 Hiroshima bombs. Nobody saw it coming but that sobering wake up call directly motivated ESA's Meerkat Asteroid Guard, an automated system watching the skies around the clock for rocks on a collision course with Earth. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/M2LEXIa via IFTTT