The Habitable Zone
The Habitable Zone brings you weekly explorations of astrobiology and life in the universe. Join us as we uncover life’s greatest frontier.
EP 22: Millenia of Nucleobases and Hours of Orbit
In this episode, we will discuss the existence of Nucleobases in the universe, and a new planet with an ultra-short period.
Sources:
Nucleobases: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-026-02824-7
TOI-4552 B: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.18233
This Episode was Filmed and Edited by Aidan Chan and Vriddhi Mittal.
Contact us at contactthehabitablezone@gmail.com
EP 21: From Jupiter’s Icy Moons to Planets Beyond the Milky Way
In this episode, we will be covering new research suggesting Jupiter’s icy moons may have received the chemical building blocks for life during their formation, as well as a study searching for the first extragalactic exoplanets in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy stream using data from the TESS space telescope. We will also explore what these discoveries mean for the origins of life and the possibility of planets beyond the Milky Way.
Sources:
Jupiter's Moon:
https://doi.org/10.3847/psj/ae3559
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staf2074
Ho...
EP 20: The Asteroid That Carried Life’s Ingredients
In this episode, we will be covering new findings from asteroid Bennu samples returned by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission and how they suggest that the building blocks of life may have formed in cold regions of space long before Earth existed.
Sources:
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2512461122
This Episode was Filmed and Edited by Aidan Chan and Vriddhi Mittal.
Contact us at contactthehabitablezone@gmail.com
EP 19: Cosmic Chemical Factories
In this episode, we will be covering how the James Webb Space Telescope uncovered complex organic molecules inside a dust-hidden galaxy and what this discovery reveals about how chemistry forms in extreme cosmic environments.
Sources:
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-025-02750-0
This Episode was Filmed and Edited by Aidan Chan and Vriddhi Mittal.
Contact us at contactthehabitablezone@gmail.com
EP 18: From Ice-Cold Earths to Planetary Destruction
In this episode, we will be covering the discovery of a new earth-sized exoplanet candidate and circumbinary systems.
Sources:
Exoplanet: https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/adf06f
Circumbinary system: https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae21d8
This Episode was Filmed and Edited by Aidan Chan and Vriddhi Mittal.
Contact us at contactthehabitablezone@gmail.com
