Exobiology

Looking for life on Saturn's largest moon Titan may be trickier than first thought. New computer simulations suggest that if life exists, there may not be a lot of it about. In fact, the mass probably wouldn't amount to much of anything at all.

The question of whether life once existed on Mars may be answered by a new laser instrument from the University of Bern. The device can be carried by a rover to zap samples of the Red Planet to see if they contain traces of microfossils.

A new discovery has boosted the chances of life soon being found on another world. NASA has announced the detection of phosphorus, the rarest element that’s essential to life, in the oceans of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

An international team of scientists is conducting the experiments designed for NASA's Perseverance Mars rover here on Earth. The purpose is to provide a baseline with which to compare the data returned from the Red Planet.

New research from a team led by MIT's Clara Sousa-Silva suggests that ET might be rather odorous. The scientists determined that phosphine – an extremely foul gas – could be a sign of oxygen-averse life on other planets beyond the solar system.

Research at the University of Edinburgh could make the search for life on Mars more efficient. Using a technique called "chemical gardening," astrobiologist Sean McMahon has demonstrated that some ancient fossils may be natural mineral deposits.

Scientists from NASA, ESA, and Roscosmos went to Outback in Australia to learn more about how to find signs of fossil life on Mars.

Scientists at Cornell University say that life-bearing exoplanets may be detectable by their soft glow. Based on laboratory studies, the team believes that a mechanism that protects organisms from hard ultraviolet radiation could make worlds beyond the solar system radiate a soft, detectable light.

If you want life on Mars, add hydrogen and and send down some asteroids. NASA's Curiosity's SAM instrument and laboratory simulations show that the impact of asteroids caused hydrogen in the ancient Martian atmosphere to stimulate the creation of the nitrates required to sustain life.

To gain a better understanding of how life might have arisen on Earth and other planets, a NASA team led by astrobiologist Laurie Barge recreated the conditions in the vicinity of hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean four billion years ago.

Algae found in a candy-pink Spanish lagoon is giving scientists hope that life could or may once have existed on Mars. Dunaliella salina EP-1, from the Laguna de Peña Hueca in La Mancha, lives in high salt and sulfur concentrations similar to those found at the buried lake at the Martian ice cap.

Is Mars too dry support life? To find out, NASA sent a team from the Ames Research Center to the Atacama Desert in Chile to identify the limit is that divides the point where microorganisms can live, and where the best they can hope for is very temporary survival, and where Mars lands on this scale.