Lifeboat Foundation

A new tool that enables thousands of tiny experiments to run simultaneously on a single polymer chip will let scientists study enzymes faster and more comprehensively than ever before.

For much of human history, animals and plants were perceived to follow a different set of rules than rest of the universe. In the 18th and 19th centuries, this culminated in a belief that living organisms were infused by a non-physical energy or “life force” that allowed them to perform remarkable transformations that couldn’t be explained by conventional chemistry or physics alone.

Scientists now understand that these transformations are powered by enzymes – protein molecules comprised of chains of amino acids that act to speed up, or catalyze, the conversion of one kind of molecule (substrates) into another (products). In so doing, they enable reactions such as digestion and fermentation – and all of the chemical events that happen in every one of our cells – that, left alone, would happen extraordinarily slowly.

Continue reading “Stanford Device Enables Thousands of Synthetic DNA Enzyme Experiments To Run Simultaneously” »

As long as a white dwarf star is alive, life will likely not survive.

New research sheds light on the possibility of life emerging on planets orbiting white dwarf stars.

Continue reading “What will happen after Earth is destroyed by the Sun? A possibility for new life” »

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When a star is born, the leftover dust and gas in the cloud from which it formed doesn’t just sit there. It clumps together, forming other cosmic objects — asteroids and comets and meteors and, yes, exoplanets. We’ve detected many of these exoplanets in orbit around alien stars in the Milky Way.

But not all exoplanets stay put. Some get gravitationally kicked away from their parent star, to wander the galaxy, cold and alone. These are less easy to detect — but, after careful combing through data from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope, astronomers think they’ve found some.

Continue reading “Kepler Seems to Have Detected a Bunch of Rogue Planets Drifting Through The Galaxy” »

In the latest addition to the phosphine on Venus debate, a team of scientists suggests the phosphine is a result of volcanic activity.

If there’s alien life nearby, where are we most likely to find it?

From nearby planets like Venus and Mars, to distant moons like Europa and Titan, these are worlds where we’re most likely to find alien life.

Continue reading “The best places to find extraterrestrial life in our solar system, ranked” »

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Continue reading “Daniel Schmachtenberger: Steering Civilization Away from Self-Destruction | Lex Fridman Podcast #191” »

Case in point, a subsidiary of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency is now proposing a nuclear power station on Mars, intended to power a future Russian base on the Red Planet, state-run news agency Sputnik reports.

The Arsenal Design Bureau, the subsidiary, is recommending using the same technologies destined for Zeus, a proposed interplanetary space tug, to power a nuclear reactor on the Martian surface as well.

The massive space tug is designed to make use of a nuclear-powered electric propulsion system to deliver payloads throughout the solar system. Earlier this year, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin suggested that Zeus could also visit other planets, including Jupiter, to search for alien life. Russia is hoping to begin flight-testing it starting around 2030.

Planets which are tilted on their axis, like Earth, are more capable of evolving complex life. This finding will help scientists refine the search for more advanced life on exoplanets. This NASA-funded research is presented at the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference.

Since the first discovery of exoplanets (planets orbiting distant stars) in 1992, scientists have been looking for worlds that might support life. It is believed that to sustain even basic life, exoplanets need to be at just the right distance from their stars to allow liquid water to exist; the so-called “Goldilocks zone.” However, for more advanced life, other factors are also important, particularly atmospheric oxygen.

Oxygen plays a critical role in respiration, the chemical process which drives the metabolisms of most complex living things. Some basic life forms produce oxygen in small quantities, but for more complex life forms, such as plants and animals, oxygen is critical. Early Earth had little oxygen even though basic life forms existed.