Lifeboat Foundation

It’s life, but not as we know it. The oldest fossil ever discovered on Earth shows that organisms were thriving 4.2 billion years ago, hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought.

The microscopic bacteria, which were smaller than the width of a human hair, were found in rock formations in Quebec, Canada, but would have lived in hot vents in the 140F (60C) oceans which covered the early planet.

The discovery is the strongest evidence yet that similar organisms could also have evolved on Mars, which at the time still had oceans and an atmosphere, and was being bombarded by comets which probably brought the building blocks of life to Earth.

Continue reading “Oldest fossil ever found on Earth shows organisms thrived 4.2bn years ago – and provides strongest evidence yet for similar life on Mars” »

The planets were discovered orbiting a dwarf star known as Trappist-1, which is 39 light years from Earth. The international group of researchers claim they will know if life exists there within a decade.

Three of the planets fall within a temperature range that should allow water to exist on their surfaces – a placement that is sometimes referred to as “the Goldilocks zone” because it is neither too hot nor too cold. Given the right sort of atmosphere, water could also be present on three of the others.

Astronomers say a solar system 39 light-years from Earth’s harbours seven Earth-sized planets, at least three of which are in the temperature sweet spot where water (and potentially life) is possible.

It’s a trap(PIST-1)! 😉

“The seven exoplanets were all found in tight formation around an ultracool dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1.”

Astronomers have found at least seven Earth-sized planets orbiting the same star 40 light-years away, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The findings were also announced at a news conference at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Continue reading “Astronomers discover 7 Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby star” »

And all of them are in the temperate zone.

In late 2015, in the Chilean desert, astronomers pointed a telescope at a faint, nearby star known as a red dwarf. Amid the star’s dim infrared glow, they spotted periodic dips, a telltale sign that something was passing in front of it, blocking its light every so often. Last summer, the astronomers concluded the mysterious dimming came from three Earth-like planets—and that they were orbiting in the star’s temperate zone, where temperatures are not too hot, and not too cold, but just right for liquid water, and maybe even life.

This was an important find. Scientists for years had focused on stars like our sun in their search for potentially habitable planets outside our solar system. Red dwarfs, smaller and cooler than the sun, were thought to create inhospitable conditions. They’re also harder to see, detectable by infrared rather than visible light. But the astronomers aimed hundreds of hours worth of observations at this dwarf, known as TRAPPIST-1 anyway, using ground-based telescopes around the world and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

Continue reading “Seven Earth-Like Planets Have Been Spotted Around a Nearby Star” »

Interestingly, Seager, who studies bio signatures in exoplanet atmospheres, has suggested that two inhabited planets could reasonably turn up during the next decade, based on her modified version of the Drake equation, Space.com notes. Her equation focuses on the search for planets with biosignature gases — gases produced by life that can accumulate in a planet atmosphere to levels that can be detected with remote space telescopes.

Continue reading “NASA announces Wed. news conference on ‘discovery beyond our solar system’” »

We may be about to meet some strange new worlds beyond our solar system.

NASA will hold a news conference Wednesday to make an announcement on exoplanets, planets that orbit a star other than our own sun. You can tune in at 1 p.m. ET and stick around for a Reddit Q&A with the researchers at 3 pm.

The dwarf planet Ceres keeps looking better and better as a possible home for alien life.

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has spotted organic molecules — the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it — on Ceres for the first time, a study published today (Feb. 16) in the journal Science reports.

And these organics appear to be native, likely forming on Ceres rather than arriving via asteroid or comet strikes, study team members said.

Continue reading “This dwarf planet has life’s building blocks, NASA probe shows” »

The Dawn spacecraft has detected for the first time evidence of organic compounds on the dwarf planet.