TESS Has Found Thousands of Possible Exoplanets. Which Ones Should JWST Study? https://www.universetoday.com/162906/tess-has-found-thousands-of-possible-exoplanets-which-ones-should-jwst-study/ #biosignatures

“Cronin and Walker figured that if a molecule is abundant enough to be detectable at all, its assembly index can indicate whether it was produced by an organized, lifelike process. The appeal of this approach is that it doesn’t assume anything about the detailed chemistry of the molecule itself, or that of the lifelike entity that made it. It’s chemically agnostic.”

— Philip Ball, A New Idea for How to Assemble Life

🔗 https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-gut-microbiome-helps-social-skills-develop-in-the-brain-20221115/

#AssemblyTheory #Evolution #OriginsOfLife #Biosignatures

& a nice opportunity to revisit pieces related to assembly theory.

“While that’s an exciting prospect for forthcoming missions to worlds like Titan and Europa, Cronin and Walker have bigger goals in mind. For example, the theory implies a temporal directionality that has nothing to do with thermodynamics but derives simply from combinatorics: there is a natural order in which objects can appear. Assembly, Cronin says, is a fundamental quantity on a par with energy and entropy. And assembly theory can be applied widely: to technology, linguistics, evolution. Did the sponge have to precede the fish? Did Tristram Shandy have to precede Finnegan’s Wake? I await answers.”

— Philip Ball, All in order

🔗 https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/is-there-a-natural-order-in-which-complex-objects-appear/4015703.article

📄 Stuart M. Marshall et al. Identifying molecules as biosignatures with assembly theory and mass spectrometry
🔗 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23258-x (🔓 open access)

#AssemblyTheory #Evolution #OriginsOfLife #Biosignatures

A #NASA mission to Saturn's moon #Titan passed a significant review. The agency said the #Dragonfly mission passed its preliminary design review earlier this month. The mission, scheduled for launch in 2027, will send a nuclear-powered #rotorcraft to #Saturn's largest moon, flying through its dense atmosphere to study the #moon and look for any #biosignatures.

Check out the replay from October 2022 with Dr. Jani Radebaugh on the WAS YouTube channel.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-dragonfly-team-soars-through-major-design-review

🎙️ ✨ A new episode has been published on @ITSPmagazine

Show: Stories From Space With Matthew S Williams

Episode: s Anybody Out There? The Search for Biosignatures

Podcast format: Audio

Enjoy!

👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/stories-from-space-podcast

#space #biosignatures #astrobiologists #tech #technology #stories

I’ve become much more profoundly conflicted about the wisdom and ethics of human #space exploration, but there are two things I desperately hope I live long enough to see: a really good, high-resolution image of a #blackhole (I think there’s a very good chance of that one) and confirmation of life elsewhere in the cosmos (crapshoot, but we seem to be getting to the point of being able to detect #biosignatures on nearby exoplanets).

This week I'm helping run a workshop on Optimal Exoplanet Imagers in astronomy at the #LorentzCenter - in other words, how do we get images of other terrestrial planets around nearby stars? We can break them down into "Pale Blue Dot" , "Faint Glowing Dot" and "Dark Red Shadow" #astrodon #exoplanet #biosignatures

Jayne continues with frontier stuff: #Biosignatures!

The #ELT with HARMONI & METIS seems to be promising us „easy“ detections of molecules. We look forward to the #ELT 🤩🤩

Keeping things hot: Magma planets can tell us about about interactions between the surface and atmosphere 😎

Jayne leaves us with her take-homes. I am flashed, this talk was ABSOLUTELY amazing 🥺🥹🤩🤩🤩

#SEHR2023

Today was the final day of #AAS241 and as all the #exoplanet sessions had finally run their course I spent some time in other sessions. This morning I went to #biosignatures which was a lot about how planetary systems might evolve to either maintain their #habitability or lose it.

How Could We Detect Life Inside Enceladus? https://www.universetoday.com/159453/how-could-we-detect-life-inside-enceladus/ #enceladuswaterplumes #methanogeniclife #biosignatures #astrobiology #aminoacids #enceladus #moonraker #featured #nasa #esa

RT @GeoElectra@twitter.com

Interested in the Origin of Life & Life Detection in rocks ? Then join our @chemobrionics@twitter.com workshop @Athens@twitter.com 🗓️20-23 Feb funded by @COSTprogramme@twitter.com
Register now (no fee) https://www.chemobrionics.eu/athens
check 👇our amazing invited speakers #prebiotic_chemistry #biosignatures https://twitter.com/chemobrionics/status/1610534272137306114

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/GeoElectra/status/1611004695610368000

Terrestrial #extrasolar #planets around low-mass stars are prime targets when searching for atmospheric #biosignatures with current and near-future telescopes.

The #habitable-zone Super-Earth LHS 1140 b could hold a hydrogen-dominated atmosphere and is an excellent candidate for detecting atmospheric features.

The planet could be one of the best known targets to detect biosignature gases with #JWST or #ELT. https://astrobiology.com/2020/12/detectability-of-biosignatures-on-lhs-1140-b.html

Paper by Wunderlich et al. (2022): https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.11426

Little thread about the upcoming #lunarEclipse. Not only are they pretty, but because Earth is in a perfect size-distance relationship with the Sun and the Moon, light interacts with our own #atmosphere before it hits the #moon during a lunar eclipse. From that, we can deduce how Earth-like #life looks like when we observe other planets! #exoplanets #biosignatures #astronomy #astrodon

Here are Four Ways JWST Could Detect Alien Life https://www.universetoday.com/158228/here-are-four-ways-jwst-could-detect-alien-life/ #exoplanetcharacterization #jameswebbspacetelescope #exoplanetatmospheres #extraterrestriallife #extrasolarplanets #biosignatures #astrobiology #exoplanets #jameswebb #featured #nasa

"[Hycean] planets [are] covered in oceans that have an atmosphere rich in hydrogen -- and they are much easier to find and observe than twins of our own planet. And learning more about #HyceanPlanets could help scientists find #biosignatures, or signs of life, outside of our solar system in the near future."
#exoplanets
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/26/world/hycean-planets-habitable-scn/index.html

Lots of articles (rational and irrational) about this. I've picked this one by the Planetary Society as it contains the right mix of excitement, caution and scepticism about the finding.

"What can we as non-scientists do to responsibly interpret this claim and not contribute to misinformation?

Let’s consider several pieces of context for evaluating the reliability—and implications—of this claim."

https://www.planetary.org/articles/venus-phosphine-biosignature

#Science #Space #Venus #Exploration #BioSignatures