To maximize crop yields on Mars it would be advantageous to do away with annuals and biannuals by engineering the latter into perennials as standard. Not only would that entail far less work to grow produce as the act of replanting is made obsolete, but per given cultivated area perennials bring forth more food and materials with less demand from the soil than the equivalent of annuals.

Imagine a superfood annual such as lentils engineered into a lentil tree for which there already…

This summer, Art of Inquiry hosts free space exploration and astrobiology webinars for middle-school students and their families all over the world.

Here is a list of what was covered so far, as well as an updated schedule of webinars:

The search for life in the Universe, Dr. Alex Tsapin, JPL (retired)

The history of SETI, SETIQuest editor, Larry…

This paper greatly extends the possibility of what a Goldilocks zone can be.  Its no longer the Goldilocks zone as a single expanse, its the Goldilocks zones for a particular area

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsif.2016.0459

I just read the piece at the link below entitled "Study: Life might survive, and thrive, in a hydrogen world."

I'd been thinking on similar lines recently, on different atmospheres with early life, but I was considering anoxogenic bacteria whose byproduct is sulfur instead of molecular oxygen. ¿Had life evolved on Venus could its sulfuric clouds be the signature byproduct of such life with no branches ever evolving to produce the equivalent of Earth's Great…