NASA Tracking a Huge Anomaly in Earth's Magnetic Field to Could Quantum Effects Be Key to Life on Titan?

Today’s news stories include Quantum effects could be key to the chemistry of life on Titan, Molecular Precursors To Life Discovered In The Perseus Cloud, and more…

Ready for launch: the mission to find alien life on Jupiter’s icy moons--The eight-year, £1.4bn JUICE-Mission voyage into deep space will explore the frozen oceans of Ganymede, Europa and Callisto, reports The Guardian. "We would like to see whether there are places around Jupiter where life could have started. We need to find a place with internal energy and liquid water,” said Olivier Witasse, the mission’s project scientist. “With the icy moons of Jupiter, we have good reasons to believe that there is more water than on Earth.”

Quantum effects could be key to the chemistry of life on Titan--Saturn’s moon Titan is too cold for many types of chemical reactions, but quantum tunneling could present a loophole that would allow reactions that are crucial for life, reports Leah Crane for New Scientist.

Astronomers May Have Detected a Hypothetical 'Strange Star’ With a mass of around three-quarters of our Sun crammed into a ball that could sit comfortably inside Manhattan, the compact object XMMU J173203.3-344518 is certainly remarkable. Weird, even. Maybe bizarre.

The Multiverse: Our Universe Is Suspiciously Unlikely to Exist—Unless It Is One of Many, reports astrophysicist Martin Rees for Singularity Hub. "It’s easy to envisage other universes, governed by slightly different laws of physics, in which no intelligent life, nor indeed any kind of organized complex systems, could arise. Should we therefore be surprised that a universe exists in which we were able to emerge?"

NASA Is Tracking a Huge, Growing Anomaly in Earth's Magnetic Field, reports Peter Dockrill for Science Alert. "A giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies above the planet, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa."

'Hubble trouble' could deepen with new measurement of the universe's expansion, reports Robert Lea for Space.com. "Physicists have improved the accuracy of a technique that uses variable stars to measure distances in the universe, providing a new figure for its expansion rate."

Physicists Discover that Gravity Can Create Light--Researchers have discovered that in the exotic conditions of the early universe, waves of gravity may have shaken space-time so hard that they spontaneously created radiation, reports Universe Today.

Molecular Precursors To Life Discovered In The Perseus Cloud, reports Keith Cowing for Astrobiology. "Some of these biological molecules are considered essential building bricks for the construction of more complex molecules such as the amino acids, which formed the genetic code of ancient micro-organisms, and brought about the flourishing of life on Earth."

Extreme Life: Deepest Fish Discovered More Than 5 Miles below the Sea Surface--A small, bizarre-looking fish was found more than five miles beneath the sea and is considered the deepest fish ever recorded, reports Tom Metcalfe for Scientific American.

A Newly Discovered Way That Earth’s Atmosphere Cleans Itself, reports Astrobiology. "Human activities emit many kinds of pollutants into the air, and without a molecule called hydroxide (OH), many of these pollutants would keep aggregating in the atmosphere."