BMS Symposium on Astrobiology India

Benu Atri provides an excellent summary of the first Blue Marble Space symposium on the Astrobiology India website. The BMS symposium was held in Chicago on the Sunday prior to AbSciCon, which provided a rare and valuable opportunity for members of our community to converse in person. Benu summarizes the roundtable discussion at the symposium, which was recorded and edited into an episode of our BlueSciCon podcast series. If you missed the symposium, then be sure to check out Benu’s […]

August 6, 2015

Podcast: Astrobiology with Cosmic Rays

Our “BlueSciCon” podcast for July features a conversation with Dr. Dimitra Atri titled “Astrobiology with Cosmic Rays“. The sun provides the primary energy source for life on Earth, and biologists have also speculated that geothermal heat near oceanic vents may have also provided energy for early forms of life. But could life survive on other forms of energy? Galactic cosmic rays are charged particles with origins from outside our solar system, and Dr. Atri suggests that these cosmic rays could […]

August 5, 2015

Solar Events Unlikely to Cause Birth Defects

High-energy cosmic rays can pose threats to airline crews at high altitudes, but how much risk do they pose for everyday life on the surface? A new study by a team of scientists that includes Dr. Dimitra Atri finds that Earth’s atmosphere provides a shilding mechanism that protects us at the surface, further confounding the problem of birth defects but at least giving us a sense of safety from cosmic rays above. This research has been featured by Science Daily […]

August 4, 2015

Spaceward Bound India 2016

Spaceward Bound, a NASA Ames initiative, is an opportunity for astrogeologists and astrobiologists to work with students in remote, off Earth analogous environments to conduct field experiments and engage in scientific discussions with participating students and science educators. As a first, scientists from NASA’s astrobiology community are teaming up with their counterparts in Australia and India to visit Ladakh, India in August 2016 to conduct experiments in a range of research areas. Ladakh is a cold, high altitude (3000-6000m asl) […]

July 23, 2015

BlueSciCon Episode 40: Astrobiology with Cosmic Rays

Dr. Dimitra Atri Listen: [mp3 download] Questions to consider: What organisms on Earth can survive solely on non-solar sources of energy? What sources of high-energy radiation could provide habitable conditions to subsurface environments? Could galactic cosmic rays power life beneath thick sheets of ice or deep oceans? What regions in the Solar System are the most likely to have increased habitability from galactic cosmic rays? How would this additional habitability mechanism direct the remote search for life in the universe? […]

July 22, 2015

Podcast: Sustained Solar System Exploration

Live from the 2015 Astrobiology Science Conference in Chicago, our BlueSciCon podcast for June features a lively discussion of our collective ideas for the “Sustained Exploration of the Inner Solar System.” We are currently promoting our essay contest for undergraduate students with the same theme, and we hope that our discussion will help to stimulate ideas in many of our essay contest participants. We purposefully excluded Mars from the conversation (only because Mars gets a lot of attention…), and so […]

July 7, 2015

Betul Kacar’s Work Featured by Quanta

Paleogenomics involves the study of ancient genomic histories to understand the mechanisms of evolution. Dr. Betul Kacar’s experimental evolution research involves the application of ancient protients into modern E. coli to track how the microbes adapt to these changes. Dr. Kacar’s work was recently featured in Quanta magazine and represents a critical step in understanding the processes by which life evolves. [read the article at Quanta magazine]

July 1, 2015

Can Cosmic Rays Power Life?

A new hypothesis paper by Dr. Dimitra Atri suggests that galactic cosmic rays could provide a source for living organisms in subsurface environments. Dr. Atri suggests several mechanisms by which secondary particles induced by galactic cosmic rays could penetrate into deep subsurface environments and provide energy to biological systems. This suggests that planets with a strong geothermal heat flux, rogue planets, and other worlds previously thought to be uninhabitable could in fact support life in the absence of starlight. Dr. […]

June 18, 2015

Re-conceptualizing the Origin of Life

Understanding the origin of life remains an elusive quest of astrobiology, and uniting the approaches of physics, chemistry, and biology remains one of the challenges of this interdisciplinary field. Dr. Sara Walker is part of the science organizing committee for the Carnegie science workshop titled “Re-conceptualizing the Origin of Life“, to be held November 9-13, 2015 in Washington, DC. Abstracts are due August 1st, and attendance is limited to 100 participants. [visit the conference website for Re-conceptualizing the Origin of […]

June 17, 2015

Reflections on EPO in Japan

The Earth-Life Science Institute in Tokyo has been rapidly developing its presence in the interdiscplinary research community, which has created the opportunity for many international scientists to visit ELSI and learn from its culture. Dr. Betul Kacar reflects on the changes she has noticed in ELSI’s culture that work toward fostering a culture of collaboration and creativity–which presents unique challenges for Japanese culture. Dr. Kacar discusses lessons from her experiences at ELSI and the role of SAGANet in helping to […]

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