Related papers: Life in solid ice
Ice formation is one of the most common and important processes on earth and almost always occurs at the surface of a material. A basic understanding of how the physicochemical properties of a material's surface affect its ability to form…
The metabolic activity of microbes has played an essential role in the evolution and persistence of life on Earth. Microbial metabolism plays a primary role in the flow of carbon, nitrogen and other elements through the biosphere on a…
The avoidance of water freezing is the holy grail in the cryopreservation of biological samples, food, and organs. Fast cooling rates are used to beat ice nucleation and avoid cell damage. This strategy can be enhanced by applying high…
Since the 1970's, when the Viking spacecrafts carried out experiments aimed to the detection of microbial metabolism on the surface of Mars, the search for nonspecific methods to detect life in situ has been one of the goals of…
Dust offers a unique probe of the interstellar medium (ISM) across multiple size, density, and temperature scales. Dust is detected in outflows of evolved stars, star-forming molecular clouds, planet-forming disks, and even in galaxies at…
The search for biosignatures necessitates developing our understanding of life under different conditions. If life can influence the climate evolution of its planet then understanding the behaviour of life-climate feedbacks under extreme…
We quantitatively study the transport of E. coli near the walls of confined microfluidic channels, and in more detail along the edges formed by the interception of two perpendicular walls. Our experiments establish the connection between…
A new experimental set-up INterStellar Ice-Dust Experiment (INSIDE), was designed for studying cosmic grain analogues represented by ice-coated carbon- and silicate-based dust grains. In the new instrument, we can simulate physical and…
A long controversy of ice lensing exists in the research of frost heave. By elucidating the mechanical and thermodynamics equilibria at the interface, we present the thermodynamics of the water/ice interface from macroscale to microscale…
Microbes thrive in diverse porous environments -- from soil and riverbeds to human lungs and cancer tissues -- spanning multiple scales and conditions. Short- to long-term fluctuations in local factors induce spatio-temporal…
We derive a phase diagram for amorphous solids and liquid supercooled water and explain why the amorphous solids of water exist in several different forms. Application of large-deviation theory allows us to prepare such phases in computer…
A planetary system may undergo significant radial rearrangement during the early part of its lifetime. Planet migration can come about through interaction with the surrounding planetesimal disk and the gas disk--while the latter is still…
The origin of the grains with diameters less than 4 micron from the inclusions in Antarctic ice cores is discussed. It is proposed that these grains were initiated by ions stopped in the upper atmosphere. The ions form molecules, which…
Cryopreservation is the only fully established procedure to extend the lifespan of living cells and tissues, a key to activities spanning from fundamental biology to clinical practice. Despite its prevalence and impact, central aspects of…
The delivery of water to the inner Solar System rocky planets, including Earth, remains debated, as standard models assume that they formed from dry grains, inside the snowline of the protosolar nebula. However, a recent work showed that a…
We investigate the prospects for the past or current existence of habitable conditions deep underneath the surfaces of the Moon and Mars as well as generic bound and free-floating extrasolar rocky objects. We construct a simple model that…
Assuming our Solar System as typical, exomoons may outnumber exoplanets. If their habitability fraction is similar, they would thus constitute the largest portion of habitable real estate in the Universe. Icy moons in our Solar System, such…
Despite the simplicity of the water molecule, the kinetics of ice nucleation under natural conditions can be complex. We investigated spontaneously grown ice nuclei using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations and found significant…
Standard accretion disk models suggest that the snow line in the solar nebula migrated interior to the Earth's orbit in a late stage of nebula evolution. In this late stage, a significant amount of ice could have been delivered to 1 AU from…
Suggestions have been made that asteroid belts may be important both for the existence of life and perhaps even for the evolution of complex life on a planet. Using numerical models for protoplanetary discs we calculate the location of the…