15 June 2020
Green dayglow detected at Mars for the first time
... was UV light, not visible light. Thanks to UVIS, which is part of the Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery (NOMAD) suite of instruments on TGO, that has the capability to detect light in the 200–650 nm spectral range...
October 2019
Are we prepared for SETI discovery?
...the emerging similarity of the position of astrobiology and SETI, I proposed the ‘London Scale’ for announcements of putative discoveries of extraterrestrial life. The structure of the two scales was consciously similar. I hoped that the London Scale...
August 2018
Exoplanet census promises radical discoveries
... stars other than the Sun. From the first exoplanet discovery (by Swiss astronomers, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz) of...the star 51 Pegasi on a four-day orbit to the remarkable discoveries of NASA’s Kepler space telescope, progress has been rapid and ...
02 October 2017
New molecule discovery may have implications for chemistry on Earth
...has been found in space for the first time, however the discovery challenges the idea that it may not be a good biomarker ...emitted by tropical plants and peat bogs, but this recent discovery shows that the compound can also form abiotically, I.e that ...
01 October 2019
Cosmic Discovery: the Search, Scope and Heritage of Astronomy
... short on illustrations, but, as implied above, it’s not really about planets and galaxies, more about the history of discovery and the technology that makes it possible. Considering the breadth of author-experience consolidated in the text, every...
11 October 2018
The Ringed Planet: Cassini’s voyage of discovery at Saturn
... book is its brevity; even the author admits that “several more books could be filled with stories of discoveries that space did not permit…”. But that’s because it is part of the Institute of Physics’ Concise Physics series...
