Sentences with phrase «alien microbes»

He and his colleagues now hope to gather responses from participants of different cultures, to compare how people across the globe would take the news of alien microbes.

The Mars 2020 will primarily search for signs that something lived on Mars in ancient times, even though the technology exists to hunt for alien microbes presently living on or just beneath the surface.

Varnum and colleagues asked about 500 online volunteers — all in the United States — to describe how they would react if they learned scientists had discovered alien microbes.

There is now even enough moisture to encourage those who seek living, breathing alien microbes — organisms that, if they exist, could hold the key to explaining how life on our own planet got its start.

If there is life on the Red Planet — even just alien microbes clinging to existence in isolated refuges — any biological contamination we import from Earth could cause an ecological and scientific catastrophe

A single alien microbe would suggest that life is encoded into the very laws of the universe.

A chemical involved in bad breath and flatulence in humans could lead us to alien microbes on the Red Planet.

The 1996 discovery of carbonate structures in meteorite ALH - 84001 — which travelled to Earth from Mars more than 13,000 years ago — was hailed at the time as evidence that alien microbes once lived on the red planet.

Tiny carbon nuggets in meteorites from Mars were formed by cooling magma, not left by ancient alien microbes.

So in addition to warm water, organic molecules, and certain minerals, this moon is also producing an accessible source of energy that could conceivably support alien microbes.

But could alien microbes actually survive there?

Its warm subterranean ocean is thought to contain all the right ingredients to harbor alien microbes, which would arguably be the biggest scientific discovery in human history.

In 1996, a Martian meteorite (top) made headlines when researchers reported it might once have hosted alien microbes (bottom)-- a claim that has not found widespread support among scientists.

Researchers are already exploring the dangers that hitchhiking microbes from Earth would pose to potential alien life, as well as the risk of alien microbes to the health of human astronauts.

Alien microbes could, in theory, feast beneath the icy surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Stories on hints of dark matter at the dawn of the cosmos, what giant family trees can tell us about human behavior, and how people think they would react to alien microbes

Frigid Europa may be warmed by a layer under its crust that moves heat and ice to and from its poles — and alien microbes could be hitching a ride

Cracker of the human genome and builder of synthetic life, Venter announced at the Wired Health Conference in New York last week that he wants to send a DNA sequencer to Mars and beam back the genomes of any alien microbes.

Even if we recover a cache of living alien microbes, that won't necessarily settle the issue.

Vakoch suggests that researchers should gauge how people might react to a range of instances in which some alien microbe might turn up.

But Lake Whillans» ecosystem is still the closest thing we've seen to the alien microbes that might be swimming in oceans far, far away.

For example, in species - poor, sub-Antarctic island ecosystems, alien microbes, fungi, plants and animals have been extensively documented as causing substantial loss of local biodiversity and changes to ecosystem function (Frenot et al., 2005).