Science
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The slowness of starlight
Because starlight takes many years to reach us, the stars in the night sky are images of the past. This curious fact has inspired the following two poems, which like starlight have outlived their originators. . For the Star by Mihai Eminscu (1850 – 1889) Translated from Romanian by A. Z. Foreman It’s been a…
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Habitable zones for deep biospheres
For the first time in history, new planets are regularly discovered around other stars. Could they support life? In a new paper in Planetary and Space Science, my colleagues and I show that life may exist far outside the traditional “habitable zone”. Life on Earth requires liquid water, an accessible source of energy and…
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“As to what they may be”
Oh how grassy is this hopper, How this berry ripely rasps. I would never have conceived it If I weren’t conceived myself! —Wisława Szymborska Astrobiology is sometimes and with some justice disparaged as a science with only one data point. This is not to deny the wealth of geological, astronomical and biological knowledge that can…
Sean McMahon 