Can Life Form in Another Solar System? Scientists Find Building Blocks for Life Around Million-Year-Old Star

Medicine & Technology Apr 09, 2015

While researchers have long believed that the circumstances and the molecular structures involved in the creation of our Sun and of our Earth were unique, it appears that far off in space there may be another solar system brimming with potential for life someday. Utilizing the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) researchers with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory have detected for the first time ever the complex organic molecules necessary to create life in a protoplanetary disk surrounding an infant star only a million years into its formation.

Moon of Saturn Could Provide Answers to the Search for Life Beyond Earth

Mar 12, 2015

If life can exist in these types of conditions here on Earth, the possibility that it also exists elsewhere in our solar system increases dramatically. For instance, what could lie beneath the ice of Jupiter's moon Europa or perhaps Saturn's moon Enceladus?

Methane Based Life Could Exist on Saturn’s Moon, Titan

Feb 28, 2015

In a new study published this week by researchers from Cornell University, the team of researchers has modeled a new methane-based life form that can metabolize and reproduce, similar to the oxygen-based life forms here on Earth. And more than that, the researchers say that these life forms could flourish in the harsh, cold environment of Saturn's moon, Titan. Titan's surface is filled with seas of liquid methane that researchers believe could harbor these methane-based cells.

Will Dawn Find Life on Ceres? What NASA Has to Say About Possible Life on the Dwarf Planet

Feb 07, 2015

Releasing the sharpest set of images from within the asteroid belt to date, this week NASA researchers have filled the internet with their hopes for what may lie on the dwarf planet Ceres. Only a month before NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will enter orbit around the 590-mile-wide dwarf, found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the space agency is hopeful that their mission will reveal a lot more about the small planet and the secrets its surface may hold.

Planets Outside Our Solar System May Be More Hospitable to Life Than Originally Believed

Jan 20, 2015

A study by astrophysicists at the University of Toronto suggests that exoplanets - planets that are outside our solar system - are more likely to have liquid water, and therefore may be more hospitable to life than researchers originally thought.

A Bit of Mediterranean Lifestyle Could Help You Live Longer

Dec 03, 2014

As if we didn’t already know that life on the Mediterranean is much better for our health, than the hectic city life and fast food of metropolises, it turns out that new research published this week in the British Medical Journal reveals that a Mediterranean Diet is amongst the healthiest out there. But while you may imagine strolls on the beach and kilos of gelato to take home, like many trips to Italy undoubtedly have, the diet that Harvard researchers investigated for the study was the trademark diet known of the Mediterranean – rich in olive oils, fish, vegetables, legumes and low in sugar. With a little added touch; a glass of wine traditional with every meal. And what the researchers found is that women who follow the strictly healthy fat diet have significantly longer life spans than women who don’t have a healthy diet – keeping them younger and in better health for years more than the global average.

Researchers Reveal Method for Magnetic Field Calculation of Exoplanets

Nov 22, 2014

Knowing the level of a planet’s magnetic field can be an important fact to know in the study of how they interact. But studying the fields of an exoplanet, outside of our solar system and orbiting a foreign star, can be a difficult task that researchers have not yet been able to achieve. Though in nearly two decades of looking past our solar system to investigate exoplanets, researchers have developed several methods to estimate magnetic fields at quite a distance.

ESA Shows Ambition of Rosetta Mission—Sci Fi Film Reveals Importance of Mission

Oct 24, 2014

With only a matter of days standing between now and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosetta Mission landing on its host Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, researchers and the ESA are looking towards what the future of the mission may mean for Earth. As the first successful orbit around a comet, speeding through our solar system on its mission around the sun, the ESA is searching for answers not only on the origin of our Earth, but also of our solar system—something they say they will find in a new sci-fi film released this morning, Oct. 24.