Cloud cover is bad for picnics and for viewing stars through a telescope. But an exoplanet with dense or even total cloud cover could help astronomers search for signs of life beyond our planet.

Cornell researchers have created the first reflectance spectra—a color-coded key—of diverse, colorful microorganisms that live in the clouds floating above Earth’s surface. Astronomers don’t know if these bacteria exist elsewhere in the universe and in enough abundance to be detected by telescopes; on Earth they are not. But now, astronomers can use the color key in the search for life outside our world—making an exoplanet’s clouds, in addition to its surface and air, a promising realm for finding signs of life.

“There is a vibrant community of microorganisms in our atmosphere that produce colorful biopigments which have fascinated biologists for years,” said astrobiologist Ligia Coelho, 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellow in astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and fellow at the Carl Sagan Institute (CSI). “I thought astronomers should know about them.”

The ancient organisms could help us understand the origins of life on Earth, and may also aid the search for life on other planets.

Scientists from New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) have uncovered new evidence that water once flowed beneath the surface of Mars, revealing that the planet may have remained habitable for life much longer than previously thought.

The study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research—Planets, shows that ancient sand dunes in Gale Crater, a region explored by NASA’s Curiosity rover, gradually turned into rock after interacting with underground water billions of years ago.

Led by Dimitra Atri, Principal Investigator of NYUAD’s Space Exploration Laboratory, with research assistant Vignesh Krishnamoorthy, the research team compared data from the Curiosity rover with rock formations in the UAE desert that formed under similar conditions on Earth.

A new study led by Dr. James De Buizer of the SETI Institute and Dr. Wanggi Lim of IPAC at Caltech has uncovered unexpected findings about how quickly massive stars take shape near the center of the Milky Way. Using data collected primarily from NASAs now-retired SOFIA airborne observatory, the researchers examined three active stellar nurseries, Sgr B1, Sgr B2, and Sgr C, situated in the heart of our Galaxy.

Despite the Galactic Center containing far denser concentrations of gas and dust than other parts of the Milky Way, the formation of massive stars (those more than 8 times the mass of our Sun) appears to occur at a slower pace there.

To investigate further, the team compared these three regions with others of similar size located farther from the center, including areas closer to our solar neighborhood. Their findings confirmed that the rate of new star formation near the Galactic Center is significantly lower than average. Even though the region holds the kind of dense, turbulent clouds that typically give rise to large stars, these environments seem to struggle to produce them.

How a scientific mistake derailed Mars exploration for 50 years. What if Viking actually did discover life on Mars? See blog with our link to eLetter in Science at.

(https://bigthink.com/hard-science/how-a-scientific-mistake-f…ploration/)

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In 1976, NASA’s Viking landers searched for life on Mars. The Viking team announced Mars was lifeless — but the data was ambiguous.

A new study proposes how we could look for signs of self-replicating (Von Neumann) probes that would prove that the Solar System has been explored by an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI).