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Physicists of the University of Granada and the University of Valencia (Spain) have developed a proceeding to analyse specific data sent by the Huygens probe from Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, proving "in an unequivocal way" that there is natural electric activity in its atmosphere. The scientific community thinks that there is a higher probability that organic molecules precursors to life could form in those planets or satellites which have an atmosphere with electric storms. Researcher Juan Antonio Morente, from the Department of Applied Physics of the University of Granada, has informed the SINC that Titan is considered to...

The potential discovery of water on one of Saturn's moons would add a new environment in the solar system where life could exist, according to scientists. NASA's Cassini spacecraft made the surprising find on Enceladus during its mission around Saturn and the ringed planet's natural satellites. The probe may have found evidence of liquid water that erupts like geysers from Yellowstone park in the western United States, NASA said Thursday. "The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon," NASA said. "We realize that this is a radical conclusion -- that...

On Aug. 28, 2012, during the 22nd Martian day, or sol, after landing on Mars, NASA's Curiosity rover drove about 52 feet (16 meters) eastward. The drive imprinted the wheel tracks visible in this image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech After decades of following the water, the reality that “life as we know it” may never have gotten a foothold on Mars’ surface, at least, has arguably taken root within the planetary science community. If life ever was or is lurking on the Red planet, it’s been extremely coy about revealing itself. The recent news that the Mars Curiosity rover has thus far...

Transport proteins show 4,000-fold preference for phosphate over arsenate.A bacterium that some scientists thought could use arsenic in place of phosphorus in its DNA actually goes to extreme lengths to grab any traces of phosphorus it can find.The finding clears up a lingering question sparked by a controversial study1, published in Science in 2010, which claimed that the GFAJ-1 microbe could thrive in the high-arsenic conditions of Mono Lake in California without metabolizing phosphorus — an element that is essential for all forms of life.Although this and other key claims of the paper were later undermined (see 'Study challenges existence...

SETI and Intelligent Design By Seth ShostakSETI Instituteposted: 01 December 200506:37 am ET If you’re an inveterate tube-o-phile, you may remember the episode of "Cheers" in which Cliff, the postman who’s stayed by neither snow, nor rain, nor gloom of night from his appointed rounds of beer, exclaims to Norm that he’s found a potato that looks like Richard Nixon’s head.This could be an astonishing attempt by taters to express their political views, but Norm is unimpressed. Finding evidence of complexity (the Nixon physiognomy) in a natural setting (the spud), and inferring some deliberate, magical mechanism behind it all,...

We are not alone in the universe -- and alien life forms may have a lot more in common with life on Earth than we had previously thought. That's the stunning conclusion one NASA scientist has come to, releasing his groundbreaking revelations in a new study in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology. Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, has traveled to remote areas in Antarctica, Siberia, and Alaska, amongst others, for over ten years now, collecting and studying meteorites. He gave FoxNews.com early access to the out-of-this-world research, published late...

We are not alone in the universe -- and alien life forms may have a lot more in common with life on Earth than we had previously thought. That's the stunning conclusion one NASA scientist has come to, releasing his groundbreaking revelations in a new study in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology. Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, gave FoxNews.com early access to the out-of-this-world research, published late Friday evening in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology. In it, Hoover describes the latest findings in his study of an...

An oasis of liquid methane has unexpectedly been discovered amid the tropical dunes of Saturn's moon Titan, researchers say. This lake in the otherwise dry tropics of Titan hints that subterranean channels of liquid methane might feed it from below, scientists added. Titan has clouds, rain and lakes, like Earth, but these are composed of methane rather than water. However, methane lakes were seen only at Titan's poles until now — its tropics around the equator were apparently home to dune fields instead.

From the University of Colorado at Boulder, proof that life can inhabit just about anywhere. CU-Boulder-led team finds microbes in extreme environment on South American volcanoesA CU-Boulder-led team has discovered some rare, primitive microorganisms on high volcanoes in South America that may be fueled by drifting gases in the region rather than photosynthesis. Credit: University of Colorado A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder looking for organisms that eke out a living in some of the most inhospitable soils on Earth has found a hardy few.A new DNA analysis of rocky soils in the Martian-like landscape on some...

New analysis of 36-year-old data, resuscitated from printouts, shows that NASA found life on Mars, an international team of mathematicians and scientists conclude in a paper published this week.

Sir Fred Hoyle Vindicated (Via Dr. Benny Peiser of the GWPF) According to new research to be published in Nature Geoscience  (embargoed until 1800 GMT/10AM PST, Sunday 8 January 2012), the next ice age could set in any time this millennium where it not for increases in anthropogenic CO2 emissions that are preventing such a global disaster from occurring. The new research confirms the theory developed by the late Sir Fred Hoyle and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe in the 1990s that without increased levels of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere ‘the drift into new ice-age conditions would be inevitable.’Hoyle and Wickramasinghe...

Astronomers report in the journal Nature that organic compounds of unexpected complexity exist throughout the Universe. The results suggest that complex organic compounds are not the sole domain of life but can be made naturally by stars.

In today's issue of the journal Nature, astronomers report that organic compounds of unexpected complexity exist throughout the Universe. The results suggest that complex organic compounds are not the sole domain of life but can be made naturally by stars. Prof. Sun Kwok and Dr. Yong Zhang of the University of Hong Kong show that an organic substance commonly found throughout the Universe contains a mixture of aromatic (ring-like) and aliphatic (chain-like) components. The compounds are so complex that their chemical structures resemble those of coal and petroleum. Since coal and oil are remnants of ancient life, this type of...

A Toxic Goo rains on residents of Oakville, Washington May 8, 1997 It sounds like a bad science fiction movie, but for the little town in Washington there was nothing entertaining about the scourge that befell them in 1994. Six times it rained down from above, leaving dozens of local residents ill, and several pets and small animals dead. It all happened in Oakville, Washington, population 665. Here in Oakville, clouds fill the skies daily, bringing rain some 275 days a year. So, when it began pouring on the morning of August 7, 1994, no one was particularly concerned -...

The pre-dawn phenomenon, which looks like a huge bubble expanding and then popping, was recorded June 22 by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and the Subaru Telescope. Since then, speculation has run rampant about the source of the early morning flash. Ichi Tanaka, a support astronomer at Subaru Telescope, describes it as "a huge halo of light above the eastern horizon," adding, "It was slowly expanding to over 45 degrees in five minutes or more."

TO SURVIVE in frigid polar regions, many cold-blooded creatures employ a natural antifreeze to protect themselves from the damage that large ice crystals would cause. These antifreeze molecules lock onto ice crystals, but not liquid water - though how they do this has been a mystery. Now the mechanism has been revealed, opening the way to using similar molecules in cancer treatments, to protect healthy tissue while tumours are destroyed by freezing. Antifreeze proteins (AFPs) found in nature lock onto ice crystals and stop them growing large enough to damage tissue. If AFPs bound as easily to liquid water as...

The reanalysis of a 1958 experiment suggests that volcanic eruptions may have spawned the amino acids that contributed to the rise of life on earth Scientific debates don't get much hotter than the one surrounding the origin of organic molecules at the dawn of life on Earth. New findings, based on a reanalysis of a 50-year-old experiment, suggests that ancient volcanic activity was the source of the very first amino acids. In the 1950s, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey of the University of Chicago performed a series of "spark discharge" experiments, in which the researchers applied electrical sparks-- meant to...

No, no, no. No no no no no no no no. No, no. No. Fox News broke the story, which ought to make one immediately suspicious — it's not an organization noted for scientific acumen. But even worse, the paper claiming the discovery of bacteria fossils in carbonaceous chondrites was published in … the Journal of Cosmology. I've mentioned Cosmology before — it isn't a real science journal at all, but is the ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics obsessed with the idea of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe that life originated in outer space and simply rained down...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927952.900-scorn-over-claim-of-teleported-dna.html A Nobel prizewinner is reporting that DNA can be generated from its teleported "quantum imprint" A STORM of scepticism has greeted experimental results emerging from the lab of a Nobel laureate which, if confirmed, would shake the foundations of several fields of science. "If the results are correct," says theoretical chemist Jeff Reimers of the University of Sydney, Australia, "these would be the most significant experiments performed in the past 90 years, demanding re-evaluation of the whole conceptual framework of modern chemistry." Luc Montagnier, who shared the Nobel prize for medicine in 2008 for his part in establishing that...

Certain molecules do exist in two forms which are symmetrical mirror images of each other: they are known as chiral molecules. On Earth, the chiral molecules of life, especially amino acids and sugars, exist in only one form, either left-handed or right-handed. Why is it that life has initially chosen one form over the other? A consortium bringing together several French teams led by Louis d'Hendecourt, CNRS senior researcher at the Institut d'astrophysique spatiale (Université Paris-Sud 11 / CNRS), has for the first time obtained an excess of left-handed molecules (and then an excess of right-handedones) under conditions that reproduce...