Arsenic-based life and Astrobiology

It’s been some time since the controvertial announcement that “arsenic-based life” had been discovered on planet Earth. With time, however, the less-sensational reality of the discovery has been made more clear, and I think it is sensible to review the current state of the research as it relates to the biochemistry of life and the idea of […]

Xenoarchaeology: Reality and Fantasy

Cultural Xenoarchaeology For reasons I can’t immediately explain, (the recent rash of technical publications addressing the concept of “xenoarchaeology” or “non-terrestrial artifacts” nonwithstanding,) there is a tantalizing idea cropping up in a number of recent and upcoming films and television programs. (See: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Prometheus, Ancient Aliens.) This concept, simply, involves the […]

Xenoarchaeology Online

I am excited to report that my article, “A call for proactive xenoarchaeological guidelines – Scientific, policy and socio-political considerations,” has been published online by the journal Space Policy as an in-press corrected proof as it awaits publication in an upcoming issue. (I mentioned working on it previously in a post here.) The thrust of […]

Differences between SETI, Astrobiology, UFOlogy

Based on some recent feedback, I’m tempted to pose a question to the cyberverse: What differences do you see, if any, between SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), Astrobiology (study of locations and potential biochemistry of extraterrestrial life), and UFOlogy (study of UFOs)? I ask this as a general point of discussion because some have […]

Plant living on the Moon?

If plans unfold as originally intended, one unexpected result of Google’s Lunar X Prize (which, like the original Ansari X Prize, is intended to spur private industry involvement in space development,) may be the transport and growth of the Moon’s first living plant. Odyssey Moon Ventures LLC and Paragon Space Development Corporation announced a partnership in […]

Target: Titan & Silicon-based life

Move over, Mars. According to new imagery from the Cassini spacecraft and new research recently published in the Journal of Cosmology, Saturn’s moon Titan may be the hottest exploration ticket in the Solar System. Up until only five years ago, the massive moon Titan was one of the last great mysteries in our neighborhood of planets. Itself […]

-Orion Nebula a Frothing Primordial Soup!

As astro-biochemists and astrobiologists have been suspecting for quite some time, the star-forming regions of space are literally teeming with the building blocks of life as we know it. With just a few hours behind the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared, or HIFI for short, (which is currently flying aboard Europe’s Herschel Space Observatory,) researchers quickly obtained the highest-resolution infrared spectrum […]