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Category: alien life

Ingredients for Life Spotted in Harsh, “Early Universe-Like” Galaxy

In a finding that may transform our understanding of how life’s chemical precursors are distributed across the universe, astronomers have detected organic molecules containing more than six atoms frozen in ice around a young star named ST6, located in a galaxy beyond the Milky Way.

Using the James Webb Space Telescopes (JWST) Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), the team identified five distinct carbon-based compounds in the Large Magellanic Cloud, our nearest neighboring galaxy. The research, led by University of Maryland and NASA scientist Marta Sewilo, was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on October 20, 2025.

Alien Probes Could Already Lurk in Our Solar System, Study Says

In 1949, famed mathematician and physicist John von Neumann delivered a series of addresses at the University of Illinois, where he introduced the concept of “universal constructor.”

The theory was further detailed in the 1966 book, Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, a collection of von Neumann’s writings compiled and completed by a colleague after his death.

In the years that followed, scientists engaged in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) considered how advanced civilizations could rely on self-replicating probes to explore the galaxy.

Scientists Unlock Secrets of the Building Blocks of the Universe

Scientists at Indiana University have made a major advance in understanding how the universe came to exist. Their success comes from a collaboration between two large international research teams studying neutrinos, the nearly massless particles that stream endlessly through space and matter while rarely interacting with anything around them. The findings, published in Nature, bring researchers closer to solving one of science’s most profound mysteries: why the universe is filled with matter, stars, planets, and life, rather than nothing at all.

This breakthrough arose from an unprecedented partnership between two world-leading neutrino experiments: NOvA in the United States and T2K in Japan. By combining their data, scientists are gaining new insight into the hidden behavior of neutrinos and their antimatter counterparts, potentially revealing why the early universe avoided self-destruction immediately after the Big Bang.

In each experiment, beams of neutrinos are generated using powerful particle accelerators and then observed after traveling vast distances underground. Detecting them is an enormous challenge; out of countless particles, only a few interact in a way that leaves measurable traces. Using sophisticated detectors and advanced computing tools, researchers reconstruct these rare interactions to understand how neutrinos change as they move through space.

JWST Detects Carbon-Rich Disk Around Young Exoplanet

“We want to learn more about how our solar system formed moons. This means that we need to look at other systems that are still under construction. We’re trying to understand how it all works,” said Dr. Gabriela Cugno.

How do moons form around gas giant planets? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated how circumplanetary disks (CPDs) comprised of the gas and dust leftover from planetary formation evolve into moons. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the conditions for exomoon formation and evolution and where scientists could potentially search for life beyond Earth.

For the study, the researchers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to observe the CPD orbiting CT Cha b, which is located approximately 620 light-years from Earth and is approximately 17 times as massive as Jupiter. The goal of the study was to ascertain the composition of the CPD and compare it to CT Cha b and the surrounding disk of the host star, CT Cha A.

In the end, the researchers found that the CPD around CT Cha b was composed of carbon-rich chemistry that contrasted compositions of gas giant exoplanet atmospheres. Additionally, the researchers found the CPD’s carbon-rich chemistry composition also contrasted with the disk surrounding CT Cha A. The team concluded that this is the first evidence of moon formation around a gas giant exoplanet and compared this to the potential formation mechanism for Jupiter’s Galilean moons.

General relativity could make life possible on planets orbiting white dwarfs

In the hunt for extraterrestrial life, we usually look for planets orbiting sun-like stars and icy moons. But there is another possible candidate—planets circling white dwarfs, the hot, dense remnants of dead stars.

A white dwarf is what is left when a star like our sun runs out of fuel and sheds its outer layers. Smaller and dimmer than they were before, these stellar remains have a habitable zone (a region where liquid water can exist on a planet’s surface) within a few million kilometers of the star, which is extremely close in astronomical terms.

While large planets have been found orbiting , scientists previously thought that life could not exist on them due to . These forces are increased when a companion planet nearby stretches the habitable planet’s orbit into an oval shape. This stretches and compresses the planet’s interior, generating frictional heat that can trigger a deadly greenhouse effect, making the planet uninhabitable. It would boil away any surface lakes and oceans and prevent life from forming.

Newly discovered ‘super-Earth’ offers prime target in search for alien life

The discovery of a possible “super-Earth” less than 20 light-years from our own planet is offering scientists new hope in the hunt for other worlds that could harbor life, according to an international team including researchers from Penn State. They dubbed the exoplanet, named GJ 251 c, a “super-Earth” as data suggest it is almost four times as massive as Earth, and likely to be a rocky planet.

“We look for these types of planets because they are our best chance at finding life elsewhere,” said Suvrath Mahadevan, the Verne M. Willaman Professor of Astronomy at Penn State and co-author of a paper about the discovery published in The Astronomical Journal.

“The exoplanet is in the habitable or the ‘Goldilocks Zone,’ the right distance from its star that liquid water could exist on its surface, if it has the right atmosphere.”

Planet formation depends on when it happens: New model shows why

A new study led by UNLV scientists sheds light on how planets, including Earth, formed in our galaxy—and why the life and death of nearby stars are an important piece of the puzzle.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers at UNLV, in collaboration with scientists from the Open University of Israel, for the first time, modeled details about how the timing of planet formation in the history of the galaxy affects planetary composition and density. The paper is titled “Effect of Galactic Chemical Evolution on Exoplanet Properties.”

“Materials that go into making planets are formed inside of stars that have different lifetimes,” says Jason Steffen, associate professor with the UNLV Department of Physics and Astronomy and the paper’s lead author.

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