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| Thermophiles Lurking in your Basement |
| Topic: Extreme Life |
04/07/11 |
| Exotic life forms may be lurking in your home, and a new citizen science project seeks to find them. By sampling home water heaters to study the micro-organisms that thrive there, scientists can learn more about the types of life we may find beyond Earth. |
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| Getting to Mars Means Stopping and Landing |
| Topic: Mars |
04/04/11 |
| With the space shuttle program reaching its end, scientists are focusing on technology that can take humans beyond Earth. All eyes are on Mars, but designing a spacecraft that can travel to and land on the Red Planet remains a prime challenge. |
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| Searching for Alien Life? Try Failed Stars |
| Topic: Alien Life |
03/31/11 |
| Free-floating planets and sub-brown dwarfs – objects with mass midway between planets and stars – could prove fertile grounds for extraterrestrial life, according to a new study. |
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| Mutant Microbes Test Radiation Resistance |
| Topic: Extreme Life |
03/24/11 |
| The bacterium B. subtilis is capable of adapting to UV levels even higher than what existed on the primordial Earth – a harbinger of untapped potential that still lies within some organisms. Mutant versions of this microbe are now being exposed to space radiation to test their reactions to conditions in space and on other worlds. |
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| The Importance of Being Magnetized |
| Topic: Spaceship Earth |
03/21/11 |
| Despite its magnetic field, Earth is losing its atmosphere to space at about the same rate as planets that lack this protective barrier against the solar wind. Scientists now are beginning to question whether magnetic fields really are vital to helping a planet hold on to its atmosphere. |
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| New Study Finds Apex Fossils Aren´t Life |
| Topic: Geology |
03/17/11 |
| Scientists have been arguing for years about microscopic structures in 3.5-billion-year-old rocks: some think they are the earliest fossilized life yet found, while others see just geology. A new study says the structures are not fossils after all, and cautions that how we interpret such structures will affect our search for life beyond Earth. |
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| Testing Mars Missions in Morocco |
| Topic: Mars |
03/10/11 |
| Martian-like landscapes in Morocco provide testing grounds for the next generation of Mars exploration missions. |
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| Radiation No Concern for Space Crops? |
| Topic: Moon to Mars |
03/03/11 |
| Flax seeds can grow in radioactive soil near the contaminated site of the Chernobyl nuclear accident without much change to their proteins, experiments show. This study may point the way to growing crops in space, on the Moon, or on Mars. |
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| Musical Chairs around the Periodic Table |
| Topic: Extreme Life |
02/17/11 |
| The claim of a microbe that swaps arsenic for phosphorus may be questionable, but alternative chemistries for life is still a question worth considering, say researchers. |
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| Mars, Brought to You by Corporate Sponsors |
| Topic: Mars |
02/10/11 |
| NASA scientists and others think business corporations could bankroll a human mission to Mars. This raises the prospect that a spaceship named the Microsoft Explorer or the Google Search Engine could go down in history as the first spaceship to bring humans to the red planet. |
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