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Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center

Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences

Artist concept of Kepler K2-138 system
Welcome to the Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center
Are we alone?  Where did we come from?  Where are we going?   How can we use Earth's history to direct our search for life elsewhere?   What did our atmosphere look like before there was oxygen?   How can we explain persistent habitation on a dynamic early earth?

 

These questions get right to the root of what it means to be human, and they are exactly what the science of Astrobiology is all about.

 

NASA Research

Selected to join the NASA Astrobiology Institute in 2015, the UCR-led Alternative Earths Team explores how Earth has remained persistently inhabited through most of its dynamic history. The idea is to look back in Earth history for direction in our search for life elsewhere—be it Mars, moons of Saturn, or worlds much farther away ...

 

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ARADS project (c) NASA
Night sky (c) Luis Quintero

UCR Center

Building on $12 million in NASA-funded assets at UC Riverside, this cross-departmental integration of Earth science and astronomy—plus a broader array of on-campus collaborations spawned by this alliance—will position the university as a world leader in the search for habitable worlds and life beyond Earth.

 

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Featured News

 

 

Many Exoplanets / NASA

Using Earth’s history to inform the search for life on exoplanets

UC Riverside is leading one of the NASA Astrobiology Program’s eight new research teams tackling questions about the evolution and origins of life on Earth and the possibility of life beyond our solar system. The teams comprise the inaugural class...
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Jupiter (c) NASA

Venus might be habitable today, if not for Jupiter

Venus might not be a sweltering, waterless hellscape today if Jupiter hadn’t altered its orbit around the sun, according to new UC Riverside research. Jupiter has a mass that is two-and-a-half times that of all other planets in our solar...
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Trappist-1 planetary system (c) NASA / JPL / Caltech

Surprising number of exoplanets could host life

Our solar system has one habitable planet — Earth. A new study shows other stars could have as many as seven Earth-like planets in the absence of a gas giant like Jupiter. This is the conclusion of a study led...
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An artist's rendering of the AU Mic star system. (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)

Newly discovered planet zips around baby star in a week

Understanding how planets form is one of the main challenges scientists face when placing our own and other planetary systems in context. Planets are thought to form from the disk-shaped clouds of gas and dust that surround newborn stars, but...
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ExSoCal 2020

September 14 - 15, 2020