Answered Questions

I realize that the MARS rover Curiosity will not be looking for life on MARS. But, if it should come across a fossil does NASA have a plan for dealing with the discovery?

All the results from NASA missions are made public, but only after the mission scientists have carefully analyzed the evidence and prepared a report to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Finding a fossil on Mars would be a spectacular discovery. However, the interpretation may not be straightforward,... More

I recently read an article about the increase in size of the glaciers on the himalayan mountains and was wondering what the explanation for this is?

A study was just reported in Nature Geosciences indicating that the largest glaciers in the KARAKORAM mountains of Northern Pakistan have not retreated over the ten years from 1999 to 2008. "The rest of the glaciers in the Himalayas are mostly melting, in that they have negative mass balance, but here we found that glaciers... More

Why are the majority of your answers nothing more than repackaged generic no comment answers? Examples of this statement would be when asked about nibiru, the response is Sitchin made it up there is nothing named Niburu,. Tyche, would be the best candidate, being it's size is on par with the size of planet x whcih is said to be as large or larger than jupiter and also a gas planet with something like 30 satellites orbiting it. Here's my question. Science Fiction teaches us that it's rare to find actual rocky stable planets that are capable of supporting complex life, a moon is much more likely candidate than a fully formed planet within the habitable zone. Is it plausible to postulate that life could have formed on one of Tyche's satellites?

The answers I give are based on science, and as my readers will know, I rarely if ever answer "no comment". There is no scientific evidence for NIbiru or Planet X or any other supposed rogue planet. While there are many interesting ideas that have come from science fiction writers,... More

Recently I heard on Discovery's news that NASA did find life on Mars about 36 years ago during the viking robot exploration, and that the data was reanalyzed to find this new discovery of life on that planet. Is this true ?

The report you saw probably referred to a recent paper published by Joseph Miller of the University of Southern California, who has reanalyzed data from the Viking Labeled Release Experiment, one of the life-detection experiments that landed on Mars in 1976 http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/04/13/3476970.htm. There were four life-detection experiments on... More

I was just wondering why people seem to slam NASA all the time. You guys (and others) proved and debunked 2012 doomsday, yet people are insisting that your lying and its all a cover up. Why do they think the government is always hiding things from us? So, I believe what you are saying, but sometimes hearing so much of these conspiracy and cover up stories I still wonder if 2012 is the end. Can you 100% say 2012 the world isnt gonna be blown up and doomsday? AND Judging from your website, there are some nutty angry folks out there. But all I want to know from a respected scientist is this: Is anything flying by or hitting earth in 2012 because I need to know if anything is going to hit earth and cause a catastrophe!

Both of you seem to have read my website and other dependable sources of information like Wikipedia and 2012hoax.com, and still you are afraid of something — you don’t know what - destroying the world this year. This is an example of the Big Lie - if a lie is... More

I thank you for all the information! It excites me to learn new things, and it makes me want to keep learning as much as I can. If NASA uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as fuel, how come no one has designed a vehicle that could run on these to elements? Maybe someone has and I haven't heard about it or maybe it is too expensive? Wouldn't this help the Global Warming predicament?

Power sources that produce electricity by non-explosive combination of hydrogen and oxygen do exist. They are called hydrogen fuel cells or simply fuel cells http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell, http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/alternative-fuels/fuel-cell.htm, http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/fuel_cells.html. NASA has used them to provide electric power for spacecraft for the past half century. You may know... More

Isn’t our species having adapted to Earth’s harsh and competitive environment what led us to become sufficiently intelligent, aggressive, and expansive to engage in space travel? Doesn’t it help answer the Fermi Paradox that a species controlling its environments and/or bioengineering new versions of itself to live in new environments, thereby become “comfortable” and loses the very things that led it to be intelligent, aggressive, and expansive?

That is an interesting suggestion. Clearly evolution is favored when there are challenges, even disasters such as mass extinction, to “shake things up”. However, too much environmental stress could have the opposite effect on the biosphere. We have no way of knowing what is the optimum level of stress. And... More

How would we find life on other planets? What are the hallmarks of a life-sustaining planet? Does life in the universe have to be rare because life requires such specific environments?

These are all basic questions at the frontiers of astrobiology research. I will answer them in reverse order. Never having found any life outside the Earth, we cannot answer the question of whether life is abundant or rare. However, recent research with the Kepler mission and other astronomical observations suggests... More

I have a question about Mars anomalies. All these images can be verified directly from NASA's sources. These two are especially compelling: Giant trees http://www.marsanomalyresearch.com/evidence-reports/2001/020/giant-plants-lakes.htm and Glass Tubes http://www.marsanomalyresearch.com/evidence-reports/2000/001/real-smoking-gun.htm.

These two sets of images are indeed striking, and both have been discussed frequently on the Internet. The features are very large, on a scale of kilometers in size. The “glass tubes” or “giant worms” are simply a trick of lighting and perspective, in which many people see craters as... More

I heard on ABC news that in Wisconsin people are hearing moaning coming from the earth and shaking? Are the poles shifting?

No the poles are not shifting. If they shifted by even a tiny amount it would be instantly apparent. None of the astronomical telescopes in the world could point or track, the GPS system would fail, and planes would be crashing all over the world. The very idea of a... More

Do asteroids ever collide with each other? There are so many of them! If two ever did collide, would it cause any visible effect we could see from Earth?

Yes, asteroids do collide with each other. There are tens of thousands of them in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, although they are not close together. We have all seen movies with the sky filled with tumbling rocks, but that is not the way the asteroid belt... More

You say Nibiru or Planet X is not real. Please can someone tell me what I am seeing with the naked eye outside my patio each night directly adjacent to the moon. The object when viewed through binoculars looks like a 1980's disco ball eminating static electricity. I want desperately to believe that our planet is safe and there has been nothing to cause alarm, but what I am witnessing with my own eye fits perfectly the description of Nibiru or Planet X.

The only way an object could appear adjacent to the Moon for several nights is if it were in that same orbit as the Moon, and of course nothing is. Please try to remember that the Earth rotates, and that the Moon is also in orbit around the Earth. The... More

What is the significance of the bright daylight meteor seen and heard in central California on April 22?

The very bright meteor that crossed the California Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada Mountains was important because it exploded to produce a "meteorite shower" of thousands of stones that fell near Sutter's Mill in the Sierra foothills. This is only the third time in history that California has recovered fragments from a known... More

I keep hearing on the video that earth is gonna become a star on December 21, 2012. These doomsday stuff, hearing about Nibiru being seen from Antartica, hollow earth theory, the strange weather patterns and the galactic alignment is really scaring me. I can't relax, I'm shaking and I'm having nightmares. Is it possible for any planets including earth become a star, expanding, growing bigger?

No it is not possible for the Earth or any planet to become a star. The fundamental difference between a planet and a star is one of mass. Stars — self-luminous celestial objects generating energy internally and sending light and heat into space — require a mass at least 70... More

Why are we always searching for life based on carbon and phosphor compounds? We have considered the concept of "habitable zone" of the planets according to our understanding only. Life on planet earth has originated and evovled due to various factors. How can we consider these sole factors and search for life on this basis only?

Although phosphorus is one the elements required for terran life, it is not usually considered to be a requirement for any life as we know it, as are carbon and liquid water. I have answered your questions many times, including discussions posted in 2002 and 2003. More recently, here is... More

I have been looking on this website but find no information on the Mayans. From what I heard, the Mayans made some doomsday prediction. Would you please describe the Mayan prediction and culture which enables them to make such a prediction?

Using the search engine on this website, I find 28 answers that discuss the Mayans. Also see answers #1 and #9 in my posted 2012 doomsday summary. The Mayans come up on Ask an Astrobiologist only because of the widespread rumors that they predicted some catastrophe in December 2012. This... More

Will the rapidly increasing CO2 in the atmosphere that is causing global warming eventually effect the oxygen levels on earth that we need to breathe? AND I recently i read your answer to one of the questions on global warming where you said atmospheric CO2 is the culprit. I read in a wikipage that plants/ trees release CO2 in darkness when photosynthesis is not possible. So my question is how much effect does this have on global warming?

The increasing atmospheric CO2 is warming the earth, but this gas remains only a trace constituent of our atmosphere. Its concentration is approximately 395 ppm (parts per million), or 0.039 percent, compared with the pre-industrial value of 280 ppm. Oxygen has a concentration of 21 percent in our atmosphere. Natural... More

What is the history behind Astrobiology? Such as how it was founded and how America reacted to this new field of study.

Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. This interdisciplinary field encompasses the search for habitable environments in our solar system and habitable exoplanets outside our solar system, the study of prebiotic chemistry, laboratory and field research into the origins and early... More

How do you prove that something won’t happen? Or prove that something doesn’t exist? I ask, because there seem to be so many people reacting aggressively about this silly Nibiru/2012 Doomsday thing and challenging you to prove that it won't happen or that Nibiru doesn't exist. I've been directing people to your website when they get stressed about the world ending, hope you don't mind.

The logic for proving a negative can be pretty simple: figure out what the implications would be if the proposition were true, and compare those predictions with the facts. Here is an example. (1) If a rogue planet like Nibiru existed and were going to be close to the Earth... More

I have combed through the evidence you have posted about Nibiru and there is still one thing you scientist have heavily avoided! What about the Sumerian Tablets and what they say about Nibiru, the Anunnaki, and our own history? When I read the translation of the tablets the earliest stories are the most believable. They talk of visiting planet after planet as they traveled until they reached earth, and they refer to refueling on Mars. How do you explain the Annunaki and the Sumerian tablets translations?

Surely you know that these “tablet translations” are fiction. The accounts of interplanetary travel you attribute to them are not real. See discussion of the Sumerian tablets in http://www.2012hoax.org/nibiru and http://www.sitchiniswrong.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibiru_cataclysm.

David Morrison
Astrobiology Senior Scientist