Now at 115,000 members and in some polls level with Labour in terms of public support, CHRIS JARVIS looks at the factors behind the rapid rise of the Greens, internal and external
Deep-sea discovery challenges theories of oxygen as an alien life marker
ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT explore how metal nodules producing oxygen on the ocean floor complicate the search for extraterrestrial life and our understanding of Earth's early atmosphere
MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS: Field of polymetallic nodules of type C in the north equatorial Pacific, photo taken from the submarine Nautile - NODINAUT campaign. The formations can be found as deep as 20,000 feet below the ocean's surface
[Philweb/CC]
Witnessing a war of words at a meeting on tackling militarism at The World Transformed, BEN COWLES spoke to a union rep who is organising against war from inside the arms industry itself, to hear about worker-led solutions to ending weapons production
FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ, ROGER D HARRIS and JOHN PERRY contrast Trump’s warships and F-35 fighters threatening Venezuela with the $20bn bailout for Milei’s collapsed economy, all enabled by a highly ideological IMF
KAY GREEN explains how the Middle East and colonialism were explored at at last weekend’s FiLiA conference
ROS SITWELL reports from Europe’s largest feminist conference – hosted this year in Brighton
Morning Star campaigns manager CALVIN TUCKER gives an update on the drive to raise £95,000 to see the people’s paper keep fighting the good fight against the rich and powerful
SOME astrophysicists try to understand the composition of planets that go round other stars — so-called “exoplanets.” They do so by looking at how light from the star is absorbed as the planet orbits around it, which allows them to find out the compounds that make up the planet’s atmosphere.
The technique allows scientists to understand something about these distant planets, though they are separated by many light years.
Some scientists believe that by identifying specific molecules in the atmospheres of these planets, we will be able to observe the signature of life. These signatures would be “biomarkers” — molecules that can’t be produced by simple chemistry, but can only be made by living organisms.
The difficulty in assessing these molecules and the remoteness of the planets make others sceptical that any biomarker would, by itself, ever be enough to categorically say that life exists.
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