August 2025 – Page 4 – My WordPress Site

Under simulated Mars-like conditions, black fungus shows how life could endure harsh extraterrestrial environments. © 2025 KAUST.

Analog Studies, Arctic / Antarctic / Alpine, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Cryobiology, Desert Worlds, Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Habitable Zones, Mars, Microbiology & Virology, Radiation

Super Fungi Survive Extreme Mars-like Environments

by Keith CowingAugust 27, 2025August 27, 2025

NASA/NExSS Extraterrestrial Photosynthesis Workshop

Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Conferences and Meetings, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microbiology & Virology, Origin & Evolution of Life, Plant Biology

NASA/NExSS Extraterrestrial Photosynthesis Workshop

by Keith CowingAugust 27, 2025August 27, 2025

Teaching A.I. to Detect Life

AI - Data - Apps - Cybernetics, Astrobiology (general), Biosignatures & Paleobiology, NASA Astrobiology Program, Origin & Evolution of Life, People Of Astrobiology

Teaching A.I. to Detect Life: Carnegie Scientist Co-Leads NASA-Funded Effort

by Keith CowingAugust 27, 2025August 27, 2025

Modelling of homogeneous accretion & multi-stage core formation (all models considering the delivery of water and carbon from the beginning of Earth accretion). Similar to Fig. 6a except that calculated core concentrations of H and C (black dotted and broken lines, respectively) and those required to explain the outer core density deficit when TICB = 6000 K (red curve), 5400 K (green) and 4800 K (right blue) are given in the right panel for each model. H2O and C concentrations in each non-carbonaceous (red) and carbonaceous chondrite (blue) are also shown. See text for more details. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology

Core-mantle Partitioning And The Bulk Earth Abundances Of Hydrogen And Carbon: Implications For Their Origins

by Keith CowingAugust 27, 2025August 27, 2025

Velocity at infinity vs. parameter α for ejected test particles -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Interstellar

Free-floating Planets Produced by Planet-Planet Scatterings: Ejection Velocity and Survival Rate of Their Moons

by Keith CowingAugust 27, 2025August 27, 2025

Illustration of the soot line and water ice line structure of protoplanetary disks, and the three chemically distinct planet archetypes. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy

Soot Planets Instead Of Water Worlds

by Keith CowingAugust 26, 2025August 26, 2025

Spectrally integrated flux maps for 3I/ATLAS observed using JWST NIRSpec: (a) scattered light from coma dust at ∼ 1.2 µm, plotted on a logarithmic scale to highlight the coma shape, (b) CO2 at 4.3 µm, (c) H2O at 2.7 µm, and (d) CO at 4.7 µm. Molecular line emission has been isolated by subtracting a polynomial fit to the adjacent continuum. Spatial coordinates are with respect to the brightest pixel in the continuum dust map. For panels (b)–(d), inset plots (upper right) show the continuum-subtracted spectra, spatially averaged across all IFU pixels. Panel (a) lower left corner shows the direction of the (sky-projected) comet-sun (S) and nucleus velocity (v) vectors (indistinguishable). -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Comets and Asteroids, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Interstellar

JWST Detection Of A Carbon Dioxide Dominated Gas Coma Surrounding Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS

by Keith CowingAugust 26, 2025August 26, 2025

Color-color plot for asteroids from Sergeyev & Carry (2021), based on the parameter space defined by Ivezi´c et al. (2001) to identify asteroid families and surface compositions. The most likely asteroid family membership for each object determined by Sergeyev & Carry (2021) is noted by point color, and the figure legend. Contours show a kernel density estimator of the density of all 90,893 asteroids in this sample in this space. The three known ISOs show different colors, but are all consistent with populations of known solar system objects. We also show the measured color of the SpaceX Roadster from DES. -- astro-ph.IM

Comets and Asteroids, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Intelligence & Language, Interstellar, SETI & Technosignatures

Technosignature Searches Of Interstellar Objects

by Keith CowingAugust 26, 2025

Juice flyby of Venus -- ESA

Europa, Missions & Hardware, Venus

Astrobiology Droid Update: Juice Team Resolves Anomaly On Approach To Venus

by Keith CowingAugust 26, 2025

Expected Doppler semiamplitude imparted on a solar-mass host star by a super-Earth with orbital period P = 2 days and Rp = 1.6 R⊕ as a function of core-mass fraction superimposed on the S. S. Brems et al. (2019) relationship between stellar age and radial velocity jitter. The solid blue line is the maximum-likelihood S. S. Brems et al. (2019) relationship while the light blue polygon is the 16th to 84th interquantile range; the horizontal black lines indicate the Doppler semiamplitudes imparted by the hypothesized super-Earths. We find that while high core-mass fraction super-Earths can be detected in the presence of radial velocity jitter at all ages, low core-mass fraction super-Earths can only be detected orbiting host stars with ages in excess of 5 Gyr. This observational bias against the detection of low core-mass fraction terrestrial exoplanets orbiting young stars can easily explain the statistically significant inverse correlation identified by A. Weeks et al. (2025) between host star age and either the logarithm of planet density or iron-mass fraction. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Stellar Cartography

Terrestrial Planets In Mean-motion Resonances Are Water Rich

by Keith CowingAugust 26, 2025