The south pole of Enceladus—a tiny moon orbiting Saturn—is a volatile place. In this region, the moon’s subsurface ocean spews jets of water through four “tiger stripe” cracks in the icy crust, culminating in a single plume of ice particles that stretches hundreds of miles into space. The Cassini spacecraft spent two decades studying these […]
Reinventing SETI: Why Our Alien-Hunting Playbook Needs an Upgrade
In this excerpt from his new book, John Gertz argues it’s time to ditch SETI’s old dogmas and rethink how we prepare for first contact. Source link
A Bold Mission to Hunt for Aliens on Venus Is Actually Happening
A UK-based mission is aiming to settle, once and for all, whether life exists on Venus. The mission plans to send a probe to the planet in search of microbial life, not on the surface, of course, but in the Venusian clouds. Over the past half-decade, scientists have detected the presence of phosphine and ammonia—two […]
Did Scientists Detect Life on Another Planet? Experts Weigh in on Bombshell Biosignature Report
Last week, researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) announced they had found something intriguing on a distant exoplanet called K2-18 b: a potential whiff of dimethyl sulfide (DMS), a molecule that, on Earth, is produced almost exclusively by microscopic marine life. The exoplanet, located about 120 light-years away, orbits within the habitable zone […]