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Alien Life or Chemistry? A New Approach

Working in the field has its limitations, as Alex Tolley reminds us in the essay that follows, but at least biologists have historically been on the same planet with their specimens. Today’s hottest news would be the discovery of life on another world, as we saw in...

M-Dwarfs: The Asteroid Problem

I hadn’t intended to return to habitability around red dwarf stars quite this soon, but on Saturday I read a new paper from Anna Childs (Northwestern University) and Mario Livio (STScI), the gist of which is that a potential challenge to life on such worlds is the...

Asteroids in Collision: A New Model

If we were to find an asteroid on a trajectory to impact the Earth, what strategies would we use to stop it? Recent work from Johns Hopkins University shows that there is a wide range in our thinking on what happens to asteroids under various mitigation scenarios....

Mission to an Interstellar Asteroid

On the matter of interstellar visitors, bear in mind that our friend ‘Oumuamua, the subject of yesterday’s post, was discovered at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy, using the Pan-STARRS telescope. The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response...