Lifeboat Foundation

Most of Mars appears to be an endless expanse of alien desert, without a river or lake in sight. However, liquid water definitely existed in the planet’s distant past. A new paper has also suggested that it’s also possible small quantities of water still might exist in places that otherwise appear barren.

Before China’s Zhurong (also known as Phoenix) rover went into hibernation mode last May, researchers from the National Astronomical Observatories and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered something unexpected. Zhurong was exploring the Utopia Planitia region, which is near the planet’s equator. No liquid water was thought to exist at those latitudes. Yet when the rover beamed back data from its Multispectral Camera (MSCam), Navigation and Terrain Camera (NaTeCam), and Mars Surface Composition Detector (MarSCoDe), there was possible evidence for liquid water having been present less than half a million years ago.

“[Our findings] suggest [features] associated with the activity of saline water, indicating the existence of water process on the low-latitude region of Mars,” the researchers said in a study recently published in Science Advances.

Did humanity miss the party? Are SETI, the Drake Equation, and the Fermi Paradox all just artifacts of our ignorance about Advanced Life in the Universe? And if we are wrong, how would we know?

A new study focusing on black holes and their powerful effect on star formation suggests that we, as advanced life, might be relics from a bygone age in the Universe.

Universe Today readers are familiar with SETI, the Drake Equation, and the Fermi Paradox. All three are different ways that humanity grapples with its situation. They’re all related to the Great Question: Are We Alone? We ask these questions as if humanity woke up on this planet, looked around the neighbourhood, and wondered where everyone else was. Which is kind of what has happened.

Aliens on nearby stars could detect Earth through radio signals leaked from the planet, new research suggests.

Scientists from The University of Manchester and the University of Mauritius used crowd sourced data to simulate radio leakage from mobile towers to determine what alien civilizations might detect from various nearby stars, including Barnard’s star, six light years away from Earth.

The research, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal, found that only more technologically advanced civilizations would be able to detect the current levels of mobile tower radio leakage from Earth. However, as most alien civilizations are likely to have more sensitive receiving systems and as we move towards more powerful broadband systems on Earth, the detectability of humans from other intelligent beings will become more and more likely.

Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array telescope’s data will now help scientists hunt for technosignatures.

The hunt for alien life will get a shot in the arm with one of the world’s most powerful radio telescope arrays joining the mission, situated about 50 miles west of Socorro, New Mexico.

The National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) will now help gather the information that enables researchers to analyze emissions that only artificial transmitters make, which signals the existence of an advanced civilization far beyond.

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Most exoplanets lying in the habitable zones around stars are in fact inhospitable to plant life as we know it. That is according to a new study from microbiologists and astronomers at the University of Georgia who say that taking into account the light a planet receives as well as its ability to hold liquid water is a better definition of whether life could exist on other planets.

The Habitable Zone (HZ) is traditionally defined to be the range of distances around a star where an exoplanet can support liquid water on its surface. Too far, and the planet remains frozen like Mars. Too close and the oceans evaporate, as happened to Venus. The zone in the middle is neither too hot, nor too cold, but just right – the so-called “Goldilocks zone”.

Nothing certain is known about the properties and requirements of alien life. However, there are generally two schools of thought in astrobiology. One is that evolution on other planets can figure out ways to sidestep seemingly insurmountable barriers to life as we know it, while others claim that life is everywhere bounded by the same universal physical principles, and can thus only operate a certain way, similar to as on Earth.

NASA has big plans in the works to test if we can eventually live life on mars and a Springfield doctor is getting the chance to be a part of the process.

“Bad Astronomer” Phil Plait’s new book is full of the technical details authors need for their novels.