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Category Archives: Exobiology
“A wicked fun read.” — Kirkus Reviews (and who am I to argue?)
YA With Real Science BY LEILA ROY – Kirkus Reviews At the risk of bringing unwelcome attention to just how very little I paid attention in my high school science classes*, one of my favorite things about Christian Schoon’s Zenn Scarlett is that … Continue reading
Legendary Powell’s Books Sez “So Long, Jeff Bezos. Sorry! (Not sorry…)”
Just in time to celebrate Independent Bookstore Day, the globally beloved Powell’s Books brick-and-mortar-words-on-real-paper-palace in Portland announced it will no longer port its books over to gazillion-pound-clickgorilla Amazon. Many authors, of course, need that clickgorilla to keep afloat, but ya … Continue reading
Good worlds are hard to find! Or: Is THIS why we aren’t being swarmed by alien life-snoopin’ bots?
A recent Sci Am article considers the so-far-fruitless hunt for intelligent life beyond Earth and attempts to deal with Fermi’s query “if life is out there, where the heck is everyone?” Their take? Well, first of all, if self-replicating machines … Continue reading
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Earthly ocean vents & alien life. Hmmm… what’s the connection? Well, why don’t we just “Ask an Astrobiologist”?!
Lots of excitement bubbling up about the off-world life potentially lurking, swimming, feeding, breeding, having organizational invade-the-Earth meetings deep under the ice-covered oceans of several moons orbiting gas giants… right in our own solar system’s back yard! Sweet. Except for … Continue reading
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Do Elon Musk’s shiny Starships threaten to totally muck up our search for life on other planets? Possibly.
Any NASA spacecraft bound for any planet in the Solar System goes through some serious de-germ-ifying before it launches. The last thing we Earthers wanna do is dump a load of our microbes all over a planet that MIGHT be … Continue reading
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Hubble’s new-found exo-planet has the exo-life Holy Grail of room-temp Goldie-Locks-zone room-temp exo-water? Yes. But….
First of all, let’s not get all “Whoa! It’s Earth’s long-lost twin sister!” and “Near-Earth discovered!” and “Could there be life?! I think I see someone WAVING!” and other over-eager hyperventilating. This isn’t Terra v.2.0. Not Earth-y, huh? All right. … Continue reading
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This next-door star system just MIGHT host a super-Earth under-ice hot-bed of alien life. So, huzzah!
Reading SF as a kid, I recalled Barnard’s Star being tagged as one of the closest local systems sporting alien civilization, or at least off-world life. Now, a couple of scientists posit that ol’ Barnard’s just might harbor some actual … Continue reading
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Mars: A Lake-Less Desert No More!
SCIENCE Magazine reports the discovery of a pretty darn good-sized body of at least semi-liquid water under the Martian south polar region. Life at last?! Hold your exo-horses, space cadets…. Now, no doubt this qualifies as more shiny fresh, fascinating … Continue reading
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Listening in on a Gazillion Off-World Worlds? Yup. We’re goin’ there. (ie: The Breakthrough Initiative puts its money where its alien-tech-sniffing multibeam reciever is.)
The Breakthrough Initiative is widening its galactic reach. New Breakthrough-funded upgrades to the CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope (“Parkes”) in New South Wales, Australia, will now allow it to sort through up to 100 petabytes of raw data from stars in … Continue reading
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So, will we Earthers welcome our new alien overlords, run down the street naked & blithering, or what?
Pretty much every speculative narrative of humanity’s First Contact goes something like this: aliens, or evidence there-of, spotted. Military, government, scientific coven, etc. declare “Must keep this ever-so-top secret. Public will go hyperactive-ape-shit. Kill all the witnesses. Especially that annoying … Continue reading
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