"I'm wondering if there has been any life discovered on Earth that is not DNA based (life that has evolved in extreme environments, for example). "
Content with the tag: “water”
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Follow the Elements
New research funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute is providing insight into how the distribution of elements in Earth’s oceans has affected the evolution of life over time. The research sheds light on how the biosphere of Earth has changed alongside the planetary environment, and will help astrobiologists understand the conditions necessary for life on other planets.
Source: [Astrobiology Magazine]
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Liquid Water in the Martian North? Maybe.
Perchlorate. Never heard of it? Join the club. But NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft has found it in the soil in the icy northern plains of Mars. And now that it’s been found, scientists are scrambling to explain how it got there, and what, if anything, its presence means about the habitability of the martian north.
Phoenix didn’t go to Mars to find perchlorate. It went looking for evidence of liquid water. From orbit, NASA’s Mars Odyssey in 2002 discovered water ice in the martian north, lying just inches beneath...
Source: [Astrobiology Magazine]
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Phoenix Confirms Martian Water, Mission Extended
Laboratory tests aboard NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander have identified water in a soil sample. The lander’s robotic arm delivered the sample Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by the heating of samples.
“We have water,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. “We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted.”
With enticing results so far and...
Source: [NASA Press Release]
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Moon Samples Found to Contain Water
Using new techniques, scientists from NAI’s Carnegie Institution of Washington Team have discovered for the first time that tiny beads of volcanic glasses collected from two Apollo missions to the Moon contain water. The researchers found that, contrary to previous thought, water was not entirely vaporized in the violent events that formed the Moon. The new study suggests that the water came from the Moon’s interior and was delivered to the surface via volcanic eruptions over 3 billion years ago. The finding calls into question some critical aspects of the “giant impact”...
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Signs of Ocean Beneath Titan's Crust?
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has discovered evidence that points to the existence of an underground ocean of water and ammonia on Saturn’s moon Titan. The Cassini science team detail their findings in this week’s Science, explaining that radar mapping of Titan revealed a shift in landmarks on the moon’s surface of up to 30 kilometers between October 2004 and May 2007. The best explanation, they say, is an underground ocean that disconnects Titan’s icy crust from its rocky interior.
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Cassini Flies Through Watery Plumes of Enceladus
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft performed a daring flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus on Wed., March 12, flying about 15 kilometers per second (32,000 mph) through icy water geyser-like jets. The spacecraft snatched up precious samples that might point to a water ocean or organics inside the little moon.
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How Low Can Geologists Go?
Scientists have begun the final leg of a five-year, NASA-funded mission to reach the bottom of Cenote Zacatón in Mexico, the world’s deepest known sinkhole.
No one has ever reached bottom and at least one diver has died in the attempt. Scientists want to learn more about Cenote Zacatón’s physical dimensions, the geothermal vents that feed it and the forms of life that exist in its murky depths.
Previous expeditions tested the robotic probe that will make the dive. The Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer, known as DEPTHX, is a tangerine-shaped submarine designed to survey...
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Seeing Our Reflection
This new article from Science & Spirit magazine cogitates on ‘following the water’ in the search for life elsewhere, and the relationship between water and enlightenment in mythology and human psychology.
Source: [Link]
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Water Vapor Detected on Extrasolar Planet
An international team of researchers including members of NAI’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory Team have, using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, detected the presence of water vapor on the hot jupiter HD 189733b. Published in this week’s Nature, the study’s primary author, Giovanna Tinetti, was a 2003 NAI Postdoctoral Fellow.
Source: [Link]
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Oceans from Comets, A How-To
Last week, teachers in the SETI Institute’s Astrobiology Summer Science Experience workshop probed questions about the Earth’s formation, including “where did the water come from?” The answer discussed was comets, and a classroom activity on how to make them is shared on Space.com…
Source: [Link]
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Evidence for Ancient Ocean on Mars
Scientists from NAI’s University of California, Berkeley Team have a new paper out in Nature outlining evidence for the presence of an ancient ocean on Mars. The study points to a large body of liquid water at the pole which could have shifted Mars’ spin axis. This shift would have in turn deformed the shoreline of this ocean relative to the rest of the surface topography, in accordance with observations.
Source: [Link]
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Found: Earth-Like Planet
A rocky planet not much larger than Earth has been detected orbiting a star close to our own neighborhood in the Milky Way, and the European astronomers who found it say it lies within the star’s “habitable zone,” where life could exist, possibly in oceans of water.
Source: [Link]
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Final Assembly of Earth-Like Planets
NAI Postdoctoral Fellow Sean Raymond leads a team of authors from NAI’s University of Colorado, Boulder, and University of Arizona Teams, and Virtual Planetary Laboratory and University of Washington Alumni Teams in a new publication in Astrobiology. They present analysis of water delivery and planetary habitability in 5 high-resolution simulations forming 15 terrestrial planets. Their results outline a new model for water delivery to terrestrial planets in dynamically calm systems, which may be very common in the Galaxy.
Source: [Link]
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DEPTHX Tests the Waters for Future Exploration of Europa
The Deep Phreatic Thermal eXplorer, or DEPTHX, is preparing for another series of dives into a 115-meter deep geothermal sinkhole in Mexico. These dives follow a series of successful tests dives to shakedown the vehicle’s autonomous navigation and mapping capabilities. Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets (ASTEP) funds the DEPTHX project as a study to develop technology that could one day allow a waterborne explorer to probe the ocean thought to exist beneath the icy outer shell covering Europa.
Source: [Link]
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Spectra of Two Extrasolar Planets
Researchers from NAI’s Carnegie Institution of Washington and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Teams have a new paper in Nature describing the infrared spectrum of exoplanet HD 209458b as obtained by the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope. Scientists from NAI’s University of Arizona and Alumni Virtual Planetary Laboratory Teams are contributing authors on a similar paper in Astrophysical Journal Letters which details the spectrum of exoplanet HD 189733b. Both sets of results show relatively flat spectra, with no significant absorption by water or methane, in contrast with the predictions of most atmospheric models. One spectral feature of...
Source: [Link]
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Liquid Water on Mars: Is It Still Flowing?
The scientific strategy of NASA’s Mars exploration can be summarized as “Follow the water.” The habitability of Mars, past or present, is intimately tied to the presence of liquid water. Since the first orbiting spacecraft, Mariner 9, surveyed the planet in the early 1970s, we have known that the Mars polar caps are composed in part of ice, and we have seen large channels cut by water that flowed on the surface billions of years ago. Two of the most important recent discoveries on Mars were “gullies” that indicate much more recent surface flows, less than a million years old, and the evidence from rovers on the surface that shallow ponds or seas of salty water must have once existed, although they may have been transient. However, all these indications of surface water are old – whether the age is measured in millions or billions of years. Now, in what looks to be one of the most important recent discoveries about Mars, we have photographic evidence that flows of liquid water have taken place in the past seven years! The change of perspective from billions or millions of years to something that happened in the twenty-first century could be profound.
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Snowball Earth and the Origin of Photosynthesis
Using atmospheric chemical models of a Snowball Earth, scientists from NAI’s Alumni Virtual Planetary Laboratory Team show that, during long and severe glacial intervals, a weak hydrological cycle coupled with photochemical reactions involving water vapor would give rise to the sustained production of hydrogen peroxide. The peroxide, upon release from melting ice into the oceans and atmosphere at the end of the snowball event, could mediate global oxidation events. Their results are published in the December 12th issue of PNAS.
Source: [Link]
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Earth’s Hidden Biospheres
Two recent discoveries in astrobiology challenge many of our assumptions about an integrated biological community on Earth. At the microbial level, it seems that there may be previously hidden biospheres that exist on Earth alongside our more familiar neighbors. One such community has been found deeply buried underground, while the other lives in the sea alongside more familiar life forms.
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Abiogenic Explanation for Methane on Mars
Researchers from NAI’s Indiana Princeton Tennessee Astrobiology Initiative Team published their theory on the origin of the detected atmospheric methane on Mars in the current issue of Astrobiology. Measurements of deep fracture water samples from South Africa led to a model which distinguishes between abiogenic and microbial methane sources based upon their isotopic composition, and couples microbial methane production to molecular hydrogen generation by water radiolysis. The authors also propose an instrument for future missions to Mars which, with measurements over time, could distinguish mechanisms for methane emissions.
Source: [Link]
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Could Impacts Have Caused Flooding on Mars?
NAI scientists on the University of California, Berkeley team describe, in a recent issue of Icarus, how meteoritic impacts on Mars may have caused Earth-like saturated soil liquefaction and potentially enabled violent groundwater eruption. Enough water, they say, could have been erupted to produce floods and outflow channels.
Source: [Link]
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Carbonated Mars
Here on Earth the only way to make carbonate rocks is with the aid of liquid water. Finding such rocks on Mars might prove, once and for all, that the barren Red Planet was once warm and wet.
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Jovian Moons
Jupiter’s four largest moons were discovered by Galileo in 1610. Three of them might hold oceans of liquid water beneath their icy exteriors. Liquid water is a prerequisite for life.
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Evidence of ocean on Jupiter's moon Ganymede
Data from the Galileo space probe suggest that liquid water may lie beneath Ganymede’s icy crust.
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Evidence Of Martian Land Of Lakes Discovered
Layers of sedimentary rock paint a portrait of an ancient Mars that may have featured numerous lakes and shallow seas.
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New Images Suggest Present-day Source of Liquid Water on Mars
Using data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, imaging scientists have observed features that suggest there may be current sources of liquid water at or near the surface of the red planet.
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The Case of the Missing Water
Did an ancient flood cover the northern lowlands? Mars Orbiter images give a front row seat.
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Back to the Surface: NASA’s 2003 Mission to Mars
Two Mars rovers, one in May and the other in June of 2003 will land six months later at different locations. Both take on the daunting task of probing for water clues.
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Mars Lakes
A ‘young’ Martian lake would be at least half-billion years old, but Martian deltas might not seem as remote as the present day desert.
Chemistry of the NH3/H2O system
Radiolytic oxidation of sulfide minerals as a source of sulfate and hydrogen to sustain microbial metabolism
Water on Mars
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