Posts by

Paul Scott Anderson

Permanently shadowed crater captured by ShadowCam

NASA's ShadowCam instrument on the Danuri lunar orbiter has sent back its 1st image. It shows details inside a permanently shadowed crater on the moon.

Paul Scott Anderson

January 24, 2023

Life on Io? An astrobiologist says it’s possible

Could there be microbial life on Io? Jupiter's hostile volcanic moon seems an unlikely home, but astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch says it's not impossible.

Paul Scott Anderson

January 23, 2023

Discovery of opal on Mars boosts chances for life

NASA's Curiosity rover has found water-rich opal on Mars. Its presence indicates that there was an extensive and potentially habitable subsurface environment.

Paul Scott Anderson

January 19, 2023

Milky Way’s farthest stars reach halfway to Andromeda

Astronomers have discovered the Milky Way's farthest stars in our galaxy's huge stellar halo. The most distant stars are almost halfway to the Andromeda galaxy.

Paul Scott Anderson

January 17, 2023

Europa Clipper gets its gas-sniffing ‘nose’

NASA has receieved an advanced mass spectrometer for the Europa Clipper mission. It will analyze gases for clues about the ocean moon's habitability.

Paul Scott Anderson

January 14, 2023

Help NASA study exoplanets with Exoplanet Watch

Do you want to help NASA study exoplanets? Now you can, with the Exoplanet Watch citizen science project. All you need is a telescope or a smartphone.

Paul Scott Anderson

January 12, 2023

How to find life on Enceladus? Look in the plumes

Do we need to drill through miles of ice to find life on Enceladus? A new study says a simpler strategy is to just re-analyze the moon's water vapor plumes.

Paul Scott Anderson

January 8, 2023

Jupiter’s moon Io: Global magma ocean, or hot metal core?

2 new research papers debate whether Jupiter's moon Io has a magma ocean or a hot metal core. The results were presented at the AGU22 meeting this month.

Paul Scott Anderson

January 4, 2023

2 alien water worlds with oceans 500 times deeper than Earth’s

An international team of astronomers says that 2 exoplanets 218 light-years away are true water worlds, with global oceans 500 times deeper than Earth's oceans.

Paul Scott Anderson

January 2, 2023

2 possibly Earth-like worlds, just 16 light-years away

An international team of astronomers has discovered 2 of the closest potentially Earth-like worlds so far, less than 16 light-years from Earth.

Paul Scott Anderson

December 29, 2022

Paul Scott Anderson

Paul Scott Anderson has had a passion for space exploration that began when he was a child when he watched Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. He studied English, writing, art and computer/publication design in high school and college. He later started his blog The Meridiani Journal in 2005, which was later renamed Planetaria. He also later started the blog Fermi Paradoxica, about the search for life elsewhere in the universe. While interested in all aspects of space exploration, his primary passion is planetary science and SETI. In 2011, he started writing about space on a freelance basis with Universe Today. He has also written for SpaceFlight Insider and AmericaSpace and has also been published in The Mars Quarterly. He also did some supplementary writing for the iOS app Exoplanet. He has been writing for EarthSky since 2018, and also assists with proofing and social media.