Latest news with #Earth-like
NDTV
15 hours ago
- Science
- NDTV
Earth Will Lose Its Oxygen: Scientists Warn Of A Rapid Countdown
A recent study reveals that Earth's oxygen-rich atmosphere, vital for complex life, is expected to last approximately one billion more years. Increasing solar radiation will reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, impairing photosynthesis and leading to a sharp decline in oxygen levels. The study that was published in Nature Geoscience said that this deoxygenation could occur rapidly, rendering Earth inhospitable to most life forms. The findings also suggest oxygen may not be a permanent biosignature on habitable planets, impacting the search for extraterrestrial life. "For many years, the lifespan of Earth's biosphere has been discussed based on scientific knowledge about the steady brightening of the sun and the global carbonate-silicate geochemical cycle. One of the corollaries of such a theoretical framework is a continuous decline in atmospheric CO2 levels and global warming on geological timescales. Indeed, it is generally thought that Earth's biosphere will come to an end in the next 2 billion years due to the combination of overheating and CO2 scarcity for photosynthesis. If true, one can expect that atmospheric O2 levels will also eventually decrease in the distant future. However, it remains unclear exactly when and how this will occur," environmental scientist Kazumi Ozaki from Toho University in Japan said when the study was published. To examine how Earth's atmosphere will evolve in the future, Ozaki and Christopher Reinhard, Associate Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, constructed an Earth system model which simulates climate and biogeochemical processes. Because modelling future Earth evolution intrinsically has uncertainties in geological and biological evolutions, a stochastic approach was adopted, enabling the researchers to obtain a probabilistic assessment of the lifespan of an oxygenated atmosphere. Ozaki ran the model more than 400 thousand times, varying the model parameters, and found that Earth's oxygen-rich atmosphere will probably persist for another one billion years before rapid deoxygenation renders the atmosphere reminiscent of early Earth before the Great Oxidation Event around 2.5 billion years ago. "The atmosphere after the great deoxygenation is characterised by elevated methane, low levels of CO2, and no ozone layer. The Earth system will probably be a world of anaerobic life forms," says Ozaki. Earth's oxygen-rich atmosphere represents an important sign of life that can be remotely detected. However, this study suggests that Earth's oxygenated atmosphere would not be a permanent feature and that the oxygen-rich atmosphere might only be possible for 20-30% of the Earth's entire history as an inhabited planet. Oxygen (and photochemical byproduct, ozone) is the most accepted biosignature for the search for life on exoplanets, but if we can generalise this insight to Earth-like planets, then scientists need to consider additional biosignatures applicable to weakly oxygenated and anoxic worlds in the search for life beyond our solar system.
Time of India
24-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Watch: NASA's Curiosity rover sends immersive landscape's video of Mars
At first glance, this panoramic view might resemble a sunlit desert in the American Southwest, with quiet ridges, earthy tones, and distant peaks. But look closer: you're actually seeing Mars. Captured by NASA 's Curiosity rover from the slopes of the three-mile-high Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater, this surreal landscape is part of a stunning 30-second video showing what the Red Planet looks like up close. What seems like mountain ranges is actually the rim of an ancient crater, created billions of years ago by a massive asteroid impact. It's the next best thing to hiking Mars without a spacesuit. NASA shares Earth like visuals from Mars The panoramic video was captured earlier this year while Curiosity explored a region known as the sulfate-bearing unit. Rich in salty minerals likely left behind by evaporating streams and ponds, the terrain provides a window into Mars' past, when water was more abundant and the climate was more Earth-like. These features help scientists understand how Mars transformed from a potentially habitable world into a frozen desert. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like My Stepdad Demands I Pay Him Rent On My 18th Birthday. He Doesn't Know I Own The House So I Did This Beach Raider Undo NASA's Curiosity Rover's track record Curiosity, which launched in 2011 and landed in 2012, has traveled over 352 million miles. That includes about 20 miles rumbling over Martian soil. Last year, its wheels uncovered a surprise: pure elemental sulfur, a substance that on Earth is often linked to volcanic activity or even microbial life. This unexpected discovery continues to fuel scientific curiosity about the planet's potential to have once supported life. Curiosity's next stop to 'Boxwork' Curiosity's next stop is a strange terrain called 'boxwork,' where mineral ridges form web-like patterns across the ground. Scientists think this region formed when the last trickles of Martian water deposited minerals in rock cracks. These formations may hold clues about the planet's last habitable phases and possibly about ancient microbial life. More than just a drive Although Curiosity is not expected to reach the boxwork until late fall, the rover's team continues to pause and study the fascinating geology along the way. As planetary geologist Catherine O'Connell-Cooper puts it, "We're not just speeding past the cool things." Each stop offers new scientific insights and spectacular views from 140 million miles away.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Aliens Might Be Talking, but Our Ears Aren't Quantum Enough to Hear Them, a Scientist Says
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: For 75 years, scientists have consistently pondered the Fermi Paradox, which asks why we don't hear from other civilizations when there are so many Earth-like worlds in the galaxy. A recent study analyzes whether these civilizations might be using quantum communication technologies beyond our own, which could explain why we don't 'hear' them. Although interstellar quantum communication is possible, the technology to detect such communications is still far from our reach. In 1950, Enrico Fermi asked the question that all of us have likely pondered at some point in our lives: Where are all of the aliens? He wasn't the first to consider this question—Soviet sci-fi legend Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, for one, asked a similar query in some of his unpublished manuscripts—and he certainly wouldn't be the last. If anything, the question has accumulated ever greater urgency as astronomers have slowly realized that there are likely billions of Earth-like planets in our galaxy alone, and we're discovering more tantalizing, potentially-life-supporting planetary candidates all the time. This 'Fermi Paradox' has spawned dozens of theories, ideas, and hypotheses in the 75 years since. Maybe a 'Great Filter' lies in our distant past—the unlikely development of eukaryotic cells is a compelling candidate—or maybe (and this is the real bummer) it still lies ahead in our future. Are the aliens just not interested? A galaxy-spanning intelligence scoring a solid 'III' on the Kardashev Scale would likely be indifferent about a sub-I species intent on poisoning its own atmosphere. In other words, maybe we're an ant among giants. Or, maybe more simply, aliens are reaching out to us, but we're just not listening—not in the right way, at least. In a study published back in 2020 in the journal Physical Review D, University of Edinburgh physicist Arjun Berera determined that quantum communication—that is, communication that leverages photon qubits rather than the more classical radio waves we use today—could maintain what's known as coherence over interstellar distances. This idea got Berera's colleague Lantham Boyle, a fellow theoretical physicist at the University of Edinburgh, to start pondering if aliens throughout our galaxy (and beyond) could be using communication technologies outside of the classical realm (specifically quantum communication) that we simply can't hear. 'It's interesting that our galaxy (and the sea of cosmic background radiation in which it's embedded) 'does' permit interstellar quantum communication in certain frequency bands,' Boyle told back in September. This curiosity eventually led to the writing of a paper, which has been uploaded to the pre-print server arXiv, titled 'On Interstellar Quantum Communication and the Fermi Paradox.' In the paper, Boyle sets out to determine if an institute like the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) could somehow incorporate quantum communication detection as part of their never-ending search for interstellar beings. While the answer to that question is technically yes, it's practically a very strong, no-bones-about-it 'no.' The problem is the size of the dish we'd need to construct in order to hear this quantum convo. For example, Boyle calculated that interstellar quantum communication would need to use wavelengths of at least 26.5 centimeters in order to avoid quantum depolarization due to the cosmic microwave background (CMB). That's all well and good, but that means that to communicate quantumly with Alpha Centauri—the nearest star to our own—we'd need a diffraction-limited telescope with a diameter of roughly 100 kilometers (60 miles), which is an area larger than the city of London. To put it mildly, SETI doesn't have that kind of budget. 'We have seen that the sender must place nearly all of their photons into our receiving telescope, which implies that the signal must be so highly directed that only the intended receiving telescope can hope to detect any sign of the communication,' Boyle wrote. 'This is in sharp contrast to classical communication, where one can broadcast photons indiscriminately into space, and an observer in any direction who detects a small fraction of those photons can still receive the message.' Of course, if such an advanced civilization is capable of overcoming these engineering challenges, it's also likely that they could just glimpse our little corner of the cosmos and know we're not technologically equipped to hear what they're sending. So, who knows? Maybe some silicon-based lifeforms orbiting a M-type star in the Large Magellanic Cloud have a regular quantum correspondence with the reigning Kardashev III civilization in Andromeda all about the peculiar apes on one particular spiral arm of the Milky Way that won't return their calls. You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A NASA rover sent home an immersive Mars panorama. Watch the video.
At first glance, this view may look like a vista from a bluff in the southwestern United States. But those aren't ordinary mountains in the distance. What appears to be a sierra is in fact the rim of an enormous crater on Mars, formed when an asteroid slammed into the Red Planet billions of years ago. The vantage point is from the slopes of the three-mile-tall Mount Sharp, sculpted over time within the crater after the ancient collision. NASA's Curiosity rover captured this extremely wide snapshot as it traversed its extraterrestrial stomping grounds in Gale Crater this February. The agency has since converted that data into a 30-second immersive video, which you can watch further down in this story. It's perhaps the next best thing to actually hiking the chilly desert roughly 140 million miles away in space. "You can imagine the quiet, thin wind," said NASA in a post on X, "or maybe even the waves of a long-gone lake lapping an ancient shore." SEE ALSO: A NASA Mars rover looked up at a moody sky. What it saw wasn't a star. NASA's Curiosity rover snaps a selfie image on lower Mount Sharp in Gale crater in August 2015. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS Since its mission launched in 2011, Curiosity, a Mini Cooper-sized lab on six wheels, has traveled about 352,000,020 miles: some 352 million whizzing through space and another 20 rumbling over Martian terrain. At the time when Curiosity drank up this scenery, it was climbing a region of Mount Sharp known as the sulfate-bearing unit. This area is chock full of salty minerals. Scientists think streams and ponds left them behind as the water dried up billions of years ago. Studying this geology offers clues about how and why Mars may have transformed from a more Earth-like world to the frozen desert it is today. Almost exactly a year ago, the rover accidentally discovered elemental sulfur, its wheels crushing the material to expose a bed of yellow crystals. When pure sulfur is made naturally on Earth, it's usually associated with superheated volcanic gases and hot springs. Another way it can form is through interactions with bacteria — a.k.a. life. "We don't think we're anywhere near a volcano where the rover is," Abigail Fraeman, deputy project scientist on the Curiosity mission, told Mashable in September, "so that is a puzzling feature to find in this particular location." A 30-second video in the above X post showcases the vast Martian panorama. Now Curiosity is on its way to a new destination where it will study an unusual landscape, called a "boxwork." This region likely necessitated warm groundwater to form. And where there's water, there's potential for life — at least the kind scientists know about. Researchers wonder if the boxwork could have hosted ancient single-celled microorganisms. From Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter images, the land feature looks like a spiderweb of ridges, spanning several miles. Dark sand fills the hollow spaces among the lattice. Scientists believe this particular boxwork may have formed when minerals in the last trickles of water seeped into surface rock and hardened. As the rocks weathered over the ages, minerals that had cemented into those cracks remained, leaving behind the weird pattern. The rover's science team doesn't expect Curiosity to reach its destination until at least late fall, said Catherine O'Connell-Cooper, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick in Canada, in the mission log. "Our drives are long right now," O'Connell-Cooper wrote, "but we are still taking the time to document all of the wonderful geology as we go, and not just speeding past all of the cool things!"
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
TRAPPIST-1 Planets Could Be Swimming in Water, Study Shows
A seven-planet system some 40 light-years from Earth could be swimming in water, new research shows. In February 2017 scientists announced the discovery of several exoplanets orbiting the red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, and ever since astronomers have keenly monitored the system for potential signs of life (aka biosignatures). According to recent findings, these planets may have an abundance of one of the most crucial elements for life: water. Since the discovery, scientists have gone back and forth on whether any planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system could be habitable. Much like the Proxima Centauri system and its Earth-like planet (Proxima b), the debate has centered on their parent stars: M-type (red dwarf) stars. These stars are smaller and cooler than our Sun and are noted for the way they are prone to flare activity. Another major question is the availability of water in this system. Previous findings have indicated that planets orbiting red dwarfs may have an overabundance of water, but they may not hold onto it for long. These findings are supported by other research that has revealed that these planets experience high rates of water lost to space, caused by the intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation from their host star. In a new study, a team of researchers led by astrobiologist Trent Thomas from the University of Washington addressed recent findings by the JWST. Recent observations by JWST of TRAPPIST-1 c ruled out a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere, indicating that the planet is not as "Venus-like" as previously thought. However, these observations did not rule out the presence of water vapor or oxygen produced by its chemical dissociation. As the team explained in their paper, "the maintenance of atmospheric water vapor would require a present-day water source, such as volcanic outgassing." To investigate this possibility and estimate plausible outgassing rates on the TRAPPIST-1 planets, the team developed a theoretical outgassing model based on the rocky planets of the Solar System ( Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars). They then applied filters based on observations of the system and what is known about its geochemistry to constrain plausible scenarios. Their findings indicated that the outgassing rates of all seven planets would be between 0.03 and eight times that of Earth. However, they also found that magma emplacement rates (the speed at which magma moves through a planet) were similar to those of Mars. While there are indications that Mars still has magma beneath its surface, it is considered 'volcanically dead'. The same may be true of the TRAPPIST-1 planets. "Our model results for magma emplacement rates also indicate that the TRAPPIST-1 planets are currently more likely to have low-to-no volcanic activity," the researchers write in their paper. "Our results indicate that the water outgassing rates on the TRAPPIST-1 planets are more likely to be lower than Earth's, but the plausible range also includes outgassing rates that are an order of magnitude higher than Earth's." Their results further indicated that the TRAPPIST-1 planets may have relatively dry Earth-like mantles. But as they emphasized, it is possible that water could make up to 1 percent of their mass fractions. "Our results indicate that drier mantles are preferred within the broader explored range of mantle water content," the team explains. "This arises due to our assumption that the TRAPPIST-1 planets have terrestrial interiors with mantle water contents that remain below 1 percent by weight upper limit throughout the 5.4 billion-year age of the TRAPPIST-1 system. The preference for lower mantle H2O values is more consistent with Earth's mantle water content." This is especially interesting considering that while water covers about 71 percent of Earth's surface, it constitutes only about 0.02 percent of its total mass. This could mean that planets orbiting within TRAPPIST-1's habitable zone are volcanically inactive and have varying degrees of water, ranging from potential 'water worlds' and barren rocky worlds to Earth-like planets covered in oceans. These results reinforce the idea that the TRAPPIST-1 system has no shortage of water. Unfortunately, many questions remain about its habitability. Fortunately, Webb's observations of TRAPPIST-1 (and other red dwarf systems) are still in their infancy. Additional observations will allow astronomers to constrain the potential habitability of this system. Their findings were reported in a preprint available on arXiv. Unknown Species of Bacteria Discovered in China's Space Station NASA Mission Captures Eerie New View of The Moon And Sun Mysteriously Perfect Sphere Spotted in Space by Astronomers
