Lichen can survive in hostile space conditions - Phenomenica. You can freeze it, thaw it, vacuum dry it and expose it to radiation, but lichen can still survive. In 2008, scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) sent a suitcase-sized Expose-E experiment package to the International Space Station (ISS) filled with organic compounds and living organisms to test their reaction to outer space. The samples returned to Earth in 2009. Lichen have proven to be tough cookies – back on Earth, some species continue to grow normally. ESA’s Rene Demets explains: “These organisms go into a dormant state waiting for better conditions to arrive.” The lichen have attracted interest from cosmetic companies. Living organisms surviving in open space supports the idea of ‘panspermia’ — life spreading from one planet to another, or even between solar systems. ESA is probing this intriguing theory further on future Station missions with different samples, according to an ESA statement.
Tropical Lakes on Saturn Moon Could Expand Options for Life. From Nature magazine Nestling among the dunes in the dry equatorial region of Saturn's moon Titan is what appears to be a hydrocarbon lake.
The observation, by the Cassini spacecraft, suggests that oases of liquid methane — which might be a crucible for life — lie beneath the moon's surface. The work is published today in Nature. Besides Earth, Titan is the only solid object in the Solar System to circulate liquids in a cycle of rain and evaporation, although on Titan the process is driven by methane rather than water. This cycle is expected to form liquid bodies near the moon's poles, but not at its dune-covered equator, where Cassini measurements show that humidity levels are low and little rain falls to the surface.
Any surface liquid there should evaporate and be transported to the cooler poles, where it should condense as rain. California Meteor Found Packed With Alien Organics. A sonic boom heard in California last week had an out-of-this world origin as ”a large meteoric event” according to NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office.
Scientists now estimate the blast measured in near 5 kilotons or roughly 1/3 the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan during World War II.Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, estimates the object was about the size of a minivan, weighed in at around 154,300 pounds. "Most meteors you see in the night’s sky are the size of tiny stones or even grains of sand and their trail lasts all of a second or two," said Don Yeomans of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
“Fireballs you can see relatively easily in the daytime and are many times that size – anywhere from a baseball-sized object to something as big as a minivan.” The meteor appears to be much more valuable than scientists first thought. Claim: Advanced dinosaurs may rule other planets. It sounds like the plot to a science fiction story, but new scientific research hypothesizes that "advanced dinosaurs" may have evolved on other planets in the universe.
According to Dr. Ronald Breslow, the advanced versions of T. rex and other dinosaurs would likely be monstrous creatures with the intelligence and cunning of humans. "We would be better off not meeting them," Breslow concludes in a study that appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Life’s Building Blocks Grow Close To Home. Red Dwarf Stars May Be Best Chance for Habitable Alien Planets. Stars known as red dwarfs might have larger habitable zones friendly to ‘life as we know it’ than once thought, researchers say.
Red dwarfs, also known as M stars, are dim compared to stars like our sun and are just 10 to 20 percent as massive. They make up roughly three-quarters of the stars in the galaxy, and recently scientists found red dwarfs are far more common than before thought, making up at least 80 percent of the total number of stars. The fact that red dwarfs are so very common has made astrobiologists wonder if they might be the best chance for discovering planets habitable to life as we know it. More and more planets are getting discovered around red dwarfs — for instance, a potentially habitable "super-Earth" at least 4.5 times the mass of Earth, GJ 667Cb, was recently found orbiting the red dwarf GJ 667C. The habitable zone of a star is defined by whether liquid water can survive on its surface, given that life exists virtually wherever there is liquid water on Earth. Logy Magazine. The Earth is alive, asserts a new scientific theory of life emerging from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
The trans-disciplinary theory demonstrates that purportedly inanimate, non-living objects — for example, planets, water, proteins, and DNA — are animate, that is, alive. Erik Andrulis, PhD, assistant professor of molecular biology and microbiology, advanced his controversial framework in his manuscript “Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life,” published in the peer-reviewed journal, Life. His theory explains not only the evolutionary emergence of life on Earth and in the Universe but also the structure and function of existing cells and biospheres.
In addition to resolving long-standing paradoxes and puzzles in chemistry and biology, Andrulis’ theory unifies quantum and celestial mechanics. The basic idea of Andrulis’ framework is that all physical reality can be modeled by a single geometric entity with life-like characteristics: the gyre.