Vast oceans of liquid water in comets may have fuelled life on Earth

September 18th, 2009 LONDON - Scientists at a new interdisciplinary research group in Austria are working to uncover how life might evolve with "exotic" biochemistry and solvents, such as sulfuric acid instead of water. The research group for Alternative Solvents as a Basis for Life Supporting Zones in (Exo-) Planetary Systems was established by the University of Vienna.

August 19th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists has determined that Carbonyl Sulphide gas warmed the world and saved it from freezing over during the Archean eon more than 3 billion years ago. When Planet Earth was just cooling down from its fiery creation, the sun was faint and young.

July 31st, 2009 WASHINGTON - NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is introducing a new Web site that will provide a centralized resource for information on near-Earth objects - those asteroids and comets that can approach Earth. The "Asteroid Watch" site also contains links for the interested public to sign up for NASA's new asteroid widget and Twitter account.

July 31st, 2009 LONDON - Did far-off comets housing vast oceans of water during the first million years of formation harbour some kind of primitive life? The existence of water in comets bolsters support for a possible connection between life on Earth and comets. The theory, known as Cometary Panspermia and pioneered by Chandra Wickramasinghe and the late Sir Fred Hoyle, argues that life was introduced to Earth by comets.

July 31st, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new University of Washington research indicates it is highly unlikely that comets have caused any of Earth's mass extinctions or have been responsible for more than one minor extinction event. The work also shows that many long-period comets that end up in Earth-crossing orbits likely originate from a region astronomers have long believed could not produce observable comets.

July 28th, 2009 LONDON - A new study of ancient rocks in Greenland has suggested that icy comets - not rocky asteroids - launched a dramatic assault on the Earth and moon around 3.85 billion years ago, thus causing the lunar surface to become scarred. "We can see craters on the moon's surface with the naked eye, but nobody actually knew what caused them - was it rocks, was it iron, was it ice?" Uffe Grae Jorgensen, an astronomer at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, told New Scientist.

July 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Parts of Mars resemble places on Earth, including its landscape, history of water, soil and even its weather, says a study. Mark Lemmon, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, long involved with Mars missions, says last year's Phoenix Mars Lander mission keeps revealing secrets about the planet, answering some questions but raising other big ones.

July 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new research has determined that many characteristics of Mars are quite similar to planet Earth, including its landscape, history of water, soil and even its weather. The research, by Mark Lemmon, a professor of atmospheric sciences, Texas A and M University, US, points out that last year's Phoenix Mars Lander mission keeps revealing secrets about the planet, answering some questions but raising other big ones.

June 24th, 2009 Study: Saturn moon has liquid water below surfaceNEW YORK — Scientists have found new evidence that one of Saturn's moons has an ocean beneath its surface. That's important because liquid water is a key ingredient for life.

June 2nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new study has suggested that large bombardments of meteorites approximately four billion years ago could have helped to make the early Earth and Mars more habitable for life by modifying their atmospheres. When a meteorite enters a planet's atmosphere, extreme heat causes some of the minerals and organic matter on its outer crust to be released as water and carbon dioxide (CO2) before it breaks up and hits the ground.

May 26th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Using instruments aboard the Deep Impact spacecraft, a team of astronomers and astrobiologists has devised a technique to tell whether an Earth-like exoplanet harbors liquid water, which in turn could tell whether it might be able to support life. "Liquid water on the surface of a planet is the gold standard that people are looking for," said Nicolas Cowan, a University of Washington doctoral student in astronomy and lead author of a paper explaining the new technique.

May 26th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Since the early 1990s, astronomers have discovered more than 300 planets orbiting far away stars, nearly all of them being gas giants like Jupiter. Now, powerful telescopes, similar to NASA's recently launched Kepler Mission, will help spot much smaller rocky extrasolar planets, or exoplanets with water, more similar to earth.

April 22nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new research, an astronomer has suggested that the most Earthlike planet yet found has conditions right for liquid water, and life as we know it. According to a report in National Geographic News, the planet, known as Gliese 581d, has a lot more in common with Earth than astronomers first thought.

March 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A group of scientists who worked on the Phoenix Mars lander last year say they have found evidence of liquid salt water on the red planet. An analysis of photographs from the lander that explored Mars for six months shows drops of what could be salty, liquid water on the legs of the lander.

March 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new analysis by a group of mission scientists has determined that salty, liquid water has been detected on a leg of the Mars Phoenix Lander and therefore could be present at other locations on the Red Planet. This is the first time liquid water has been detected and photographed outside the Earth.