Life | Hard Science Fiction

Aug 20 2021

Superflares may not be that dangerous for planets

In "Proxima Rising," the planet Proxima b and its inhabitants become victims of an eruption of the central red dwarf, a superflares. Astronomers have long suspected that such radiation bursts can permanently damage the atmospheres - and thus the habitability - of exoplanets. A new study published Aug. 5 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society may now give the all-clear. Using optical observations from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite - TESS for short - the team, led by astronomers from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam, studied large superflares on red dwarfs, a class of young, small…

Interesting planetary system in our neighborhood

Life

Aug 6 2021

Interesting planetary system in our neighborhood

At a distance of 34 light-years, the red dwarf L98-59 belongs to the closer neighborhood of the solar system. The fact that three rocky planets orbit it was discovered two years ago by the planet hunter TESS. The three inner planets are relatively close to their parent star. It is probably too warm there for life. The innermost planet is only about half the size of our Venus and thus one of the smallest planets discovered so far. Technically, it is easier to find large and heavy planets than small and light ones, so the true distribution of planet…

Life

Jul 27 2021

Water vapor on Ganymede

Jupiter's moon Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system and, at 5262 km in diameter, is even larger than the planet Mercury. But while the planet closest to the sun is dry and hot, Ganymede is the complete opposite. The moon harbors more water than all the Earth's oceans combined. However, because it orbits so far from the Sun, most of the water is frozen. All of it? No. At a depth of 160 kilometers, there is a liquid ocean beneath the icy crust, warmed by the gravitational pull of the gas giant Jupiter. But even on…

Enceladus

Jul 10 2021

New signs of life from Enceladus

In the geysers at Enceladus' south pole, the hypothetical probe "Enceladus Life Finder" detects clear signs of life in my book "The Enceladus Mission" - whereupon a crewed spacecraft, the ILSE, is sent to Saturn's moon. But it all really starts with Cassini, the NASA-ESA mission that found a relatively high concentration of certain molecules associated with hydrothermal vents at the bottom of Earth's oceans, specifically hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide, just there. The amount of methane found in the vapor plumes was particularly unexpected. "We wanted to know: Could Earth-like microbes that 'eat' the hydrogen and produce methane…

Life

Jun 10 2021

Surprising candidates for extraterrestrial life

When astronomers look for places outside Earth where life might exist, they often first check the habitable zone of star systems. After all, the Milky Way alone is home to 100 to 400 billion stars and at least that many planets. Habitable means that water should exist there in liquid form. Water, as far as we know, is the elixir of life. It has made life on Earth possible and is essential for the continuation of all living systems on the planet. This explains why scientists are constantly searching for evidence of water on other solid bodies in the…

Water oceans in the crust of icy planets

Life

May 30 2021

Water oceans in the crust of icy planets

A pressure 200,000 to 400,000 times that of Earth's atmosphere, plus temperatures around 1500 Kelvin - these sound like uncomfortable conditions. They prevail where, in water-ice planets of the size of Neptune, the ice merges into the rocky core. Does liquid water exist under these conditions, and if so, how does it interact with the planet's rocky seafloor? New experiments show that on water-ice planets between the size of our Earth and up to six times that size, water selectively leaches magnesium from typical rock minerals. An international team of researchers led by Taehyun Kim of Yonsei University in Seoul,…

Where water will be easiest to find on Mars

Life

Feb 8 2021

Where water will be easiest to find on Mars

The more resources we have to transport to our neighboring planet, the more expensive a manned mission to Mars will be. Current concepts therefore rely on the human inhabitants using the resources that Mars makes available to them. On the one hand, there is the carbon dioxide atmosphere, from which methane can be obtained as fuel for the return flight - and on the other, there are water and ice deposits from which oxygen and drinking water can be obtained. It is already known that Mars is not completely dry. While the atmosphere is available everywhere (although it becomes…

I welcome our future rulers, the Artificial Superintelligences

Astrophysics

Jan 12 2021

I welcome our future rulers, the Artificial Superintelligences

An artificial intelligence that is smarter than humans is one of the favorite subjects in science fiction. There are researchers who claim that such an AI is technically impossible. Others believe it is inevitable. If that could be the case, humanity faces a difficult problem. Can we somehow ensure that this superintelligence is benevolent to us? Can we control it? Because if we can't, the survival of humanity would be in its hands alone. A conception, which can please us so little that we would have to do then everything to prevent its emergence. An international team of researchers…