Assembly Theory shifts the search for life from identifying specific molecules to measuring chemical complexity, offering a more universal and less Earth-biased approach.
Category: alien life
Hydrogen atmosphere could keep exomoons habitable for billions of years
Liquid water is considered essential for life. Surprisingly, however, stable conditions that are conducive to life could exist far from any sun. A research team from the Excellence Cluster ORIGINS at LMU and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) has shown that moons around freefloating planets can keep their water oceans liquid for up to 4.3 billion years by virtue of dense hydrogen atmospheres and tidal heating—that is to say, for almost as long as Earth has existed and sufficient time for complex life to develop.
Planetary systems often form under unstable conditions. If young planets come too close, they can fling each other out of their orbits. This creates free-floating planets (FFPs) that wander through the galaxy without a parent star. An earlier study by LMU physicist Dr. Giulia Roccetti had shown that gas giants ejected in this way do not necessarily lose all of their moons in the process. The new study is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Tidal heating keeps oceans liquid The ejection does, however, alter the orbits of the moons. They become highly elliptical, such that their distance from the planet constantly changes. The resulting tidal forces rhythmically deform the lunar body, compress its interior, and generate heat through friction. This tidal heating can be sufficient to maintain oceans of liquid water on the surface—even without the energy of a star, and in the cold of interstellar space.
Legged robot could accelerate resource prospecting on the moon and the search for life on Mars
Planetary surface missions currently operate cautiously. On Mars, communication delays between Earth and rovers (typically between four and 22 minutes), as well as data transfer constraints due to uplink and downlink limitations, force scientists to plan operations in advance. Rovers are designed for energy efficiency and safety, and to move slowly across hazardous terrain.
As a result, exploration is typically limited to only a small portion of the landing site, with rovers typically traveling up to a few hundreds of meters per day, which makes it difficult to collect geologically diverse data.
In a study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies, a team led by Dr. Gabriela Ligeza, former Ph.D. student from the University of Basel and now a postdoctoral researcher at the European Space Agency (ESA), tested a different approach: a semi-autonomous robotic explorer which can investigate multiple targets one-by-one and collect data without constant human intervention.
Where to find other Earths? New list narrows down the targets
New Cornell research – co-authored by an undergraduate and two recent alumni – will help exoplanet scientists pinpoint the most likely places to look for life in the universe out of more than 6,000 exoplanets.
The paper, “ Probing the Limits of Habitability: a Catalogue of Rocky Exoplanets in the Habitable Zone,” published March 19 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Authors are Abigail Bohl ’26, Lucas Lawrence ’23, Gillis Lowry ’25 and Lisa Kaltenegger, professor of astronomy and director of the Carl Sagan Institute in the College of Arts and Sciences.
The project utilizes new data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission and the NASA Exoplanet Archive to identify planets in the habitable zone.
Is it possible to *build* a fourth dimension? 🧊
We only ever experience three spatial dimensions, but quantum lab experiments suggest a whole new side to reality – weird particle apparitions included.
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Yuval Noah Harari: Why advanced societies fall for mass delusion
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“The problem is in our information. Humans, yes, we are generally good and wise, but if you give good people bad information, they make bad decisions.”
Human history is a paradox: we accumulate knowledge at astonishing speed, while remaining vulnerable to deception, superstition, and the stories that steer entire civilizations.
From the first clay tablets to today’s global media systems, the structures that carry our ideas have always shaped what societies can build, believe, and destroy. That paradox is even more important in the age of AI, says Yuval Noah Harari.
0:00 If humans are so smart, why are we on the verge of destruction?
How To Detect Faster Than Light Travel
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Warp drives may or may not be possible, but if they are then could a distant alien civilization’s warp fields produce gravitational waves that we could see here on Earth? According to a recent study… Actually maybe, at least eventually. And we now know just what to look for and how to look for it.
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A lost moon may have created Titan and Saturn’s rings
Titan may be the battered survivor of a colossal moon merger that reshaped Saturn’s rings and rewrote the planet’s history.
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, may have been born in a colossal cosmic crash. New research suggests Titan formed when two older moons slammed together hundreds of millions of years ago—an event so violent it reshaped Saturn’s entire moon system and may have indirectly sparked the formation of its iconic rings. Clues come from Titan’s unusual orbit, its surprisingly smooth surface, and the strange behavior of the tumbling moon Hyperion.
New research suggests that Saturn’s brilliant rings and its largest moon, Titan, may share a violent past shaped by collisions between moons. Although NASA’s Cassini spacecraft transformed our understanding of Saturn during its 13 year mission, it also uncovered new puzzles, including the surprisingly young age of Saturn’s rings and Titan’s shifting orbit. A new study led by SETI Institute scientist Matija Ćuk proposes that these mysteries are connected and that Titan itself may have formed when two earlier moons merged.