Category: Blog

A Living Mars?

The possibility of a living Mars is deeply ingrained in popular culture. The observations of the astronomer Percival Lowell, and his interpretation that these canals were built to channel melt-water from the polar regions down to the dying cities and farms huddled around the equator, are well known. Even into the 1960s, textbooks were being published that explained the temporal variation in surface brightness as due to the seasonal spread of vegetation. Martians are the science-fiction writer’s alien invader of choice, from the heat-ray-wielding tripods of H.G. Wells to the bulbous-headed aggressors of Tim Burton’s 1996 filmMars Attacks. With the armada of robotic probes currently orbiting and roving across the red planet, Mars has never been so fore-front in the public eye. Much of this interest is focussed on the possibility that our planetary neighbour has supported an independent genesis of life, and that in certain regions it may remain habitable even to this day. In this feature article, a selection of some of the most recent results and discoveries concerning the astrobiological potential of Mars will be discussed.

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Read on Geology Today

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Life’s a beach on planet Earth

Post author By lewis
Post date 12 January 2008
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Did life on Earth begin on a radioactive beach? That’s the claim of one astrobiologist, who says that life’s ingredients could have emerged from the radioactive sand grains of a primordial beach laced with heavy metals and pounded by powerful tides.

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Life… but not as we know it

Post author By lewis
Post date 1 November 2007
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From ice grains to plasma crystals: why alien life might be weirder than you think

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Phoenix to test habitability of Martian arctic

Post author By lewis
Post date 6 August 2007
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On Saturday a phoenix ascended to the heavens upon a pillar of fire and smoke, rising from the ashes of its ancestors.

Read full story on The Daily Telegraph website

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Martian Death Rays

When I tell people that I spend my days testing the possibility of life on Mars they usually reply in one of two ways. ‘No seriously, what do you do?’ is only slightly more common than the wittier ‘So you’re not holding out for much fieldwork, then?’ Astrobiology is a bright young discipline, aiming to answer some of the most fascinating questions within science and dinner-table conversation alike. Does life exist ‘out there’ among the pinpricks of light in the heavens, or are we alone in the cosmos? No current scientific field fires people’s fascination more than the quest for extraterrestrial life, and a large proportion of students have cited the reason for continuing science is their interest in astrobiology. For now many astrobiologists’ money is on Mars, our planetary neighbour, as it was once a lot like Earth.

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Phoenix and the boundary of life on Mars

Post author By lewis
Post date 16 July 2007
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This August the Phoenix lander is to be launched for Mars, and like it’s mythological namesake will literally rise from the ashes of Mars Polar Lander and Mars Surveyor atop a pillar of flame.

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Life in the Universe: A Beginner’s Guide

Post author By lewis
Post date 1 June 2007
2 Comments on Life in the Universe: A Beginner’s Guide

Astrobiology, the study of life and its existence in the universe, is one of the hottest areas of scientific research. Lewis Dartnell considers some of the fascinating questions facing researchers today. Could life exist anywhere else in the universe? What might aliens really look like? Dartnell explains why Earth is uniquely suited for life and reveals our profound connection to the cosmos.

[Get this on Amazon]

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Gliese 581 C > An Astrobiologist’s Perspective

Post author By lewis
Post date 11 May 2007
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After the May 9th Q’n’A with Xavier Bonfils, one of the astronomers envolved in the discovery of Gliese 581 C, the possibility of the exoplanet gathering the conditions for the existence of life stayed floating in the air. As Bonfils referred, some of the questions were not from his field of study, in consequence of this Lewis Dartnell, from the University College London and author of ‘Life in the Universe: A Beginner’s Guide‘, initiates his participitation as spacEurope’s resident astrobiologist by explaining the astrobiological significance of this new discovery.

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Phoenix Special > The Role of MECA, TEGA and the Robotic Arm

Post author By lewis
Post date 2 May 2007
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We are now less than a month away from the arrival of Phoenix at the Martian arctic plains. Excitement surrounding this unique mission has been mounting steadily since its launch last August, when I last wrote on Phoenix, and at long last the wait is almost over. You can already read on spaceEurope the thoughts of many of the key players intimately involved in the design of the probe and its operation on the frosty martian surface over the coming months, and what I’d like to give here is an insight into what astrobiologists like myself are hoping for.

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Matrix: Simulating the world Part I – Particle models

Post author By lewis
Post date 1 March 2007
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Building models forms the core of many areas of scientific and engineering research. Essentially, a model is a representation of a complex system that has been simplified in different ways to help understand its behaviour. An aeronautical engineer, for example, might build a miniaturised physical model of a fighter plane to test in a wind tunnel. In modern times, more and more modelling is being performed by computers – running mathematical models at very high rates of calculations. A computer model of the flow of air over a supersonic wing is incredibly sophisticated, but it is based on very basic principles of program design and simulation. In this article, the first half of a two-part feature on model behaviour, we’ll take a look at how simple computer models can be programmed to study some very interesting natural systems as well as focus on how a few scientists are using similar models in their own front-line research.

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Going to Mars? Don’t forget to pack gravity

Post author By lewis
Post date 3 November 2006
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pack_gravity

Floating around in microgravity inside a spacecraft might look like fun, but it can do nasty things to your body. With the current enthusiasm for crewed space flight and particularly NASA’s plan to send astronauts to Mars, there is a need to find ways to counteract the damaging effects of a lack of gravity.