Water worlds may starve alien life

• Autores: Shannon Hall
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3154, 2017, pág. 14
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • When it comes to the search for alien life, there is such a thing as too much water. A planet covered in oceans could be starved of phosphorus--a major component of DNA and other important molecules. That is according to work presented recently by Tessa Fisher of Arizona State University in Tempe and her colleagues at the Habitable Worlds conference in Laramie WY. Unlike other essential nutrients for life, phosphorous is hard to find. It's mostly locked away in rocks, and it is only freed when rainfall splatters those rocks and flushes phosphorous into water where it's accessible to microbes