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Dec 11, 2020A planet in an unlikely orbit around a double star 336 light-years away may offer a clue to a mystery much closer to home: a hypothesized, distant body in our solar system dubbed "Planet Nine."
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Nov 27, 2020New research suggest that glycine, and very likely other amino acids, form in dense interstellar clouds well before they transform into new stars and planets.
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Nov 12, 2020In a new video from the NASA Astrobiology Program, astrobiologists Dr. Jason Dworkin and Dr. Scott Sandford explain the importance of the OSIRIS-REx mission in the quest to understand the role that asteroids and other small bodies play in the origins of life on Earth. OSIRIS-REx & the
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Nov 12, 2020New lab experiments re-create the environment of Europa and find that the icy moon shines, even on its nightside. The effect is more than just a cool visual.
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Oct 28, 2020NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has confirmed, for the first time, water on the sunlit surface of the Moon.
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Oct 26, 2020Some exoplanets have a direct line of sight to observe Earth’s biological qualities from far, far away.
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Oct 8, 2020Venus may have had an Earth-like environment billions of years ago, with water and a thin atmosphere. Yet testing such theories is difficult without geological samples to examine.
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Sep 19, 2020A rare molecule – phosphine – has been discovered in the clouds of Venus. On Earth, this gas is only made industrially, or by microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments.
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Aug 26, 2020A theory, called "panspermia", supports the possibility that microbes may migrate between planets and distribute life in the universe.
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Aug 25, 2020A new study is helping scientists piece together the ancient climate of Mars by revealing how much rainfall and snowmelt filled its lake beds and river valleys 3.5 billion to 4 billion years ago.