All Things Space

[Gromit]

Is that a black hole or just a new neutron star? It's probably just a neutron star that has been playing hide-n-seek for 37 years. There is evidence in the 1987A Super Nova of what looks like a neutron star. Evidently, there is a slight possibility it could also be a recently deceased star.

 

[mlnevese]

'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien technology

A distant star system housing 6 planets that move in 'mathematically perfect' orbits has ignited a search for possible alien technosignatures.

www.livescience.com

 

[Antimatter]

 

[mlnevese]

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/29/science/venus-gases-phosphine-ammonia/index.html

 

[m7600]

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/29/science/venus-gases-phosphine-ammonia/index.html

Extremely impressive, this is the most important scientific news right now, IMO.

Another report that's also quite interesting is the discovery of "dark oxygen" at the bottom of the ocean:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/22/science/dark-oxygen-discovery-deep-sea-mining/index.html

 

[m7600]

@Antimatter get out of my kitchen, please.

 

[mlnevese]

NASA discovers signs of life on Mars, hidden beneath the ice

New NASA research suggests that microbes could thrive in meltwater beneath Mars’ frozen surface, offering a potential habitat for life.

interestingengineering.com

To save a click, they didn't find life but found a new place to look for it.

 

[Antimatter]

Sunrise on the Moon captured by Blue Ghost spacecraft after NASA and Firefly Aerospace announce successful lunar landing:

Earth shines over the moon in amazing 1st photos from private Blue Ghost lander. 'We're all in that picture.'

Blue Ghost aced its lunar landing and is already sharing its first stunning views from the moon.

www.space.com

 

[Antimatter]

The James Webb Space Telescope detected dimethyl sulfide on a planet 124 light-years away.

No known non-biological process can produce the quantity measured. Moreover, methane and oxygen had previously been detected there. The planet is in its star’s habitable zone.

https://www.astronomy.com/science/k...-sulfide-in-its-air-but-is-it-a-sign-of-life/

Even if the detection is confirmed, the question remains: How reliable is DMS as a biosignature? On Earth, DMS is produced by life like phytoplankton. It’s part of the smell of a sea breeze. And as far as scientists know, life is the only way DMS is produced on Earth.

But that doesn’t mean it can’t be produced by nonliving means elsewhere in the universe.

A year ago, researchers reported a detection of DMS on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko — hardly a location brimming with life. (The team found the signal in archival data from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission.) In September of last year, a team of researchers reported that in lab experiments, they were able to produce DMS by shining UV light on a simulated, hazy exoplanet atmosphere. This suggests that the reactions between a star’s photons and molecules in a planet’s atmosphere could provide a nonbiological way to produce DMS. And this February, a team of radio astronomers reported the detection of DMS in the gas and dust between stars. All of these results challenge the idea that DMS is a clear sign of life.

The team references the photochemical experiment in their paper, but argues that such reactions could not produce the amount of DMS they find on K2-18 b. Neither, they say, could comet impacts deliver DMS in the quantities that they observe with JWST.