#NASA is linking to CastRoller http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/articles/vatican-hosts-study-week-on-astrobiology/ Awesome!

New Evidence Points to Fossilized Life on Mars [Mad Science]
Thirteen years ago, a team of researchers studying the Allan Hills meteorite found evidence that the rock might contain fossils of Martian bacteria. Now, fresh evidence makes a stronger case that Mars once contained life very similar to Earth bacteria....

New discussion: Astrobiology and religion: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=11842&uid=280491190382

Overcoming Bias : Pondering Panspermia
Astrobiology, International Journal of Astrobiology, and Origins of Life.  In the process I’ve become converted to a more expansive version panspermia – life here probably originated outside our solar system. I’ve also learned: panspermia is no...

Discovery News : Discovery Channel
Hibernation and space travel

Charlie's Diary: How habitable is the Earth?
So, back to the gedankenexperiment. Currently, a random meat probe dropped on the Earth's surface has something like a 15% chance of finding it survivable. But a random sampling over the historical epoch would return a survivability probability of...

What We Still Don't Know? (2004) | CosmoLearning Astronomy
What We Still Don't Know? (2004), with Royal Astronomer Sir Martin Rees.

New theory suggests that we may not be alone after all
Astrophysicist Brandon Carter's long-standing argument against finding intelligent extraterrestrial life has been roundly challenged by a team of Serbian researchers led by Milan Ćirković.Carter's theory assumed set timescales for two processes: the...