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Ever wondered how life began and whether there is life on other planets? You're not alone, but the curiosity rarely turns into a career. The UW astrobiology program gives hope to would-be professional stargazers. Astrobiology -- the study of life in the universe -- looks for scientific answers to questions like "How did life begin on this planet?" and "Are we alone in the universe?" The field builds on knowledge across several disciplines. UW biology professor Peter Ward and UW astronomy professor Donald Brownlee believe discovering intelligent aliens on other planets is unlikely. In Rare Earth, a book the two...

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-02a.html A Universe Of Life: Maybe Not by Karl Hill Las Cruces - Jan 7, 2002 This vast universe surely holds plenty of worlds where life can flourish, right? Don't bet on it, says New Mexico State University physicist Slava Solomatov. The more scientists learn about the conditions that make life possible on Earth, the more they realize how complex those factors are -- and how a relatively small change in one condition or another could have rendered the planet uninhabitable, Solomatov said. "It's a very finely tuned system," he said. "Some of the factors are well known, but we ...

Our solar system may be unique after all, despite the discovery of at least 120 other systems with planets, astronomers said on Wednesday. All the other solar systems that have been found have big, gassy planets circling too close to their stars to allow them to be anything like Earth or its fellow planets, the British and U.S.-based researchers said. If that is the case, Earth-like planets will be very rare, the astronomers write in the latest issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "Maybe these other extrasolar systems ... contain only the giant planets," said Mario...

In the scientific community, there is still a great deal of energy devoted to “listening” for evidence or hints of intelligent, extraterrestrial civilizations out among the stars. Most of you are probably familiar with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and their decades of work in this field. They’re still at it and, in fact, are upping their game with a new generation of laser sensors. These projects drew fresh attention after the discovery of Tabby’s Star and the frantic speculation over whether or not some ancient civilization had built a Dyson Sphere around their own sun. This has led...

While the truth might be out there, technological aliens don't seem to be — at least not yet. New results from the most comprehensive Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program ever undertaken — which surveyed 1,327 nearby stars for signals from intelligent beings — have turned up empty. "There's certainly nothing out there glaringly obvious," ... lead author of a paper about the results, which were published in The Astrophysical Journal, told Live Science. "There's no amazingly advanced civilizations trying to contact us with incredibly powerful transmitters." While the team didn't find anything this time around, Price said that there...

If you ever find yourself at a cocktail party of astrophysicists and don't know what to say, try this: "But what about the angular momentum?" No matter what the topic of conversation, you'll be guaranteed to sound erudite. Nearly every field of astronomy, from galaxy formation to star formation, has an "angular momentum problem." Nothing in the cosmos ever seems to spin or orbit at the rate it should. The moon is no exception. It is the flywheel to end all flywheels; if its orbital angular momentum were transferred to Earth's axial rotation, our planet would come close to spinning ...

Without the Moon, there would have been no life on Earth. Four billion years ago, when life began, the Moon orbited much closer to us than it does now, causing massive tides to ebb and flow every few hours. These tides caused dramatic fluctuations in salinity around coastlines which could have driven the evolution of early DNA-like biomolecules. This hypothesis, which is the work of Richard Lathe, a molecular biologist at Pieta Research in Edinburgh, UK, also suggests that life could not have begun on Mars. According to one theory for the origin of life, self-replicating molecules such as DNA...

Moons like the Earth's - which are formed in catastrophic collisions - are extremely rare in the Universe, a study by US astronomers suggests. The Moon was created when an object as big as the planet Mars smacked into the Earth billions of years ago. The impact hurled debris into orbit, some of which eventually consolidated to form our Moon. The Astrophysical Journal reports that just 5-10% of planetary systems in the Universe have moons created this way.

THE recent announcement by a team of astronomers that there could be as many as 40 billion habitable planets in our galaxy has further fueled the speculation, popular even among many distinguished scientists, that the universe is teeming with life.The astronomer Geoffrey W. Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, an experienced planet hunter and co-author of the study that generated the finding, said that it “represents one great leap toward the possibility of life, including intelligent life, in the universe.” But “possibility” is not the same as likelihood. If a planet is to be inhabited rather than merely habitable,...

Five Out of Five Researchers Agree: Earth's Solar System Special By Sara Goudarzi Special to SPACE.com posted: 31 March 2005 NEW YORK -- Though researchers find more and more distant planets revolving around alien suns, the discoveries highlight that Earth and its solar system may be an exceptionally rare place indeed. That was the consensus here Wednesday evening among five planetary science experts who spoke at the 5th annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Panel Debate held at the American Museum of Natural History. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium, moderated the informal discussion. At issue...

Rare Jewel: Earth-Like Planets May Be Very Rare Msgr. Charles Pope • February 20, 2019 • As we conclude our mini-series on the Genesis accounts of creation and the fall, I would like to ponder God’s magnificent work. We are not here by accident; God has carefully arranged things so that we can exist and flourish. In this regard, I have written a good bit over the years about what is known as the “Rare Earth Hypothesis.” Let’s review some of the basics of this hypothesis.While most people, including most scientists, believe that there may be billions of inhabitable...

Rare Jewel: Earth-like Planets May Be Very Rare Msgr. Charles Pope • February 28, 2016 • I have written a good bit over the years about what is known as the “Rare Earth” Hypothesis. A recent blog on discovermagazine.com ponders how high the odds are against the existence of another Earth-like planet. More on that in a moment. But first let’s review some of the basics of the Rare Earth Hypothesis.While most people, including most scientists, believe that there may be billions of inhabitable planets out there a capable of sustaining complex life, the Rare Earth Hypothesis suggests that...

VIDEO AT LINK................ It’s been 30 years since the discovery of the first planet around another star like our Sun. With every new discovery, scientists move closer to answering whether there are other planets like Earth that could host life as we know it. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The milestone highlights the accelerating rate of discoveries, just over three decades since the first exoplanets were found. The official number of exoplanets — planets outside our solar system — tracked by NASA has reached 6,000. Confirmed planets are added to the count on a rolling basis by scientists from around the world, so...

NASA’s TESS has uncovered two rocky Earth-sized planets around a nearby star, including one super-Earth with an Earth-like interior and extraordinary density. Image credit: Canva | The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel Astronomers using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have confirmed the discovery of two rocky exoplanets orbiting a nearby K-type star, designated TOI-2322. The results, published on August 25, 2025, in a detailed paper on arXiv, highlight how the ongoing TESS mission continues to expand the catalog of known worlds beyond our solar system, with particular interest in planets that share characteristics with Earth. The TESS Mission And...

Could a vagabond giant from the outermost regions of interstellar space be poised on the cusp of sweeping by our cosmic doorstep? Astronomers say yes and they have the data to support it. Using the Pan-STARRS survey telescope on Hawaii and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, researchers have found a giant rogue planet, possibly as massive as Jupiter, speeding toward the solar system. It is a transient discovery made possible by the combination of wide-sky monitoring and the capability of high-resolution spectroscopy. Pan-STARRS first notified astronomers to the object with weak, creeping light signals near...

Explanation: That yellow spot -- what is it? It's a young planet outside our Solar System. The featured image from the Very Large Telescope in Chile surprisingly captures a distant scene much like our own Solar System's birth, some 4.5 billion years ago. Although we can't look into the past and see Earth's formation directly, telescopes let us watch similar processes unfolding around distant stars. At the center of this frame lies a young Sun-like star, hidden behind a coronagraph that blocks its bright glare. Surrounding the star is a bright, dusty protoplanetary disk -- the raw material of planets....

NASA reveals a breathtaking photo of Earth and Moon taken from deep space. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU | The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel From nearly 290 million kilometers away, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft turned its gaze homeward and captured an arresting glimpse of Earth and the Moon, now just distant specks of light nestled among the stars of the Aries constellation. According to NASA, this deep-space photo opportunity came as part of a scheduled instrument calibration while the spacecraft continues its cruise toward the asteroid Psyche. Testing Cameras With Familiar Cosmic Landmarks The image, taken on July 20 and 23, was created...

The Webb Space Telescope has spotted a new tiny moon orbiting Uranus. The new member of the lunar gang, announced Tuesday by NASA, appears to be just six miles (10 kilometers) wide. It was spotted by the telescope’s near-infrared camera during observations in February. Scientists think it hid for so long — even eluding the Voyager 2 spacecraft during its flyby about 40 years ago — because of its faintness and small size. Uranus has 28 known moons that are named after characters from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. About half are smaller and orbit the planet at closer range. This...

Astronomers using the Gemini North telescope at NSF’s International Gemini Observatory have captured 3I/ATLAS as it makes its temporary passage through our cosmic neighborhood ============================================================== This image from the Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS-N) at the Gemini North telescope shows the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. Image credit: International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / K. Meech, IfA & U. Hawaii / Jen Miller & Mahdi Zamani, NOIRLab. Interstellar objects are objects that originate outside of, and are observed passing through, our Solar System. Ranging from tens of meters to a few kilometers in size, these objects are pieces of cosmic...

In a groundbreaking discovery published in The Planetary Science Journal, a team of astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has confirmed the existence of a rare object located far beyond Neptune. Known as 2020 VN40, this trans-Neptunian object is in a unique orbital resonance with the giant planet Neptune. For every ten orbits Neptune completes, 2020 VN40 completes one orbit around the Sun. This rare alignment provides key insights into how objects in the outer solar system behave and evolve over time. The research, which draws from extensive observations made by the Large Inclination Distant...