Guardian: A NASA astrobiologist claims to have found microscopic fossils of alien algae-like beings inside meteorites that landed on Earth. Writing in the Journal of Cosmology, Richard Hoover claims that the samples’ lack of nitrogen, which is essential for life on Earth, indicates they are “the remains of extraterrestrial life forms that grew on the parent bodies of the meteorites when liquid water was present, long before the meteorites entered the Earth’s atmosphere.” Hoover, an expert on life in extreme environments who works at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, said that laboratory tests on the rocky filaments found no evidence to suggest they were remnants of Earth-based organisms that contaminated the meteorites after they landed. Rudy Schild, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and editor of the journal, said: “The implications are that life is everywhere, and that life on Earth may have come from other planets.”
The finding that the Saturnian moon may host layers of icy slush instead of a global ocean could change how planetary scientists think about other icy moons as well.
Modeling the shapes of tree branches, neurons, and blood vessels is a thorny problem, but researchers have just discovered that much of the math has already been done.
January 29, 2026 12:52 PM
Get PT in your inbox
PT The Week in Physics
A collection of PT's content from the previous week delivered every Monday.
One email per week
PT New Issue Alert
Be notified about the new issue with links to highlights and the full TOC.
One email per month
PT Webinars & White Papers
The latest webinars, white papers and other informational resources.