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In the search for life elsewhere, astronomers have mostly looked for planets of a similar size, mass, temperature and atmospheric composition to Earth. However, astronomers from the University of Cambridge believe there are more promising possibilities out there. To read the full article.

The new programme will be jointly taught and led by astronomers, chemists, zoologists, plant biologists, and earth scientists. Applications for the course are now open. The MPhil is a 10-month cross-departmental programme designed to deliver outstanding postgraduate level training in the search for life’s origins on Earth and its discovery on plane…

Selen Etingü joined us on 1st September as our new LCLU Centre and Project Manager. She moved over from the Office of External Affairs and Communications, where she was the Public Engagement and Impact Manager responsible for the Schools; Arts & Humanities, Humanities & Social Sciences. She holds a PhD in Art and Archaeology, which has initiated a …

A Day Workshop at the University of Cambridge between the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe, University of Cambridge   and the Exploring Uncertainty and Risk in Contemporary Astrobiology (EURiCA) Project, University of DurhamTuesday 13 June 2023Faculty of Divinity, West RoadWorkshop ProgrammeThe two longer talks, at 2.30 and 4.00 pm, will…

For thousands of years, humanity and science have contemplated the origins of life in the Universe. While today’s scientists are well-equipped with innovative technologies, humanity has a long way to go before we fully understand the fundamental aspects of what life is and how it forms.“We are living in an extraordinary moment in history,” says Did…

Little ‘hurricanes’ that form in the discs of gas and dust around young stars can be used to study certain aspects of planet formation, even for smaller planets which orbit their star at large distances and are out of reach for most telescopes.Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Institute for Advanced Study have developed a techniq…

The amazing survival strategies of polar marine creatures might help to explain how the first animals on Earth could have evolved earlier than the oldest fossils suggest according to new research published in Global Change Biology. These first, simple and now extinct, animals might have lived through some of the most extreme, cold and icy periods t…

The problem of how phosphorus became a universal ingredient for life on Earth may have been solved by a group of Cambridge scientists, who have recreated primordial seawater containing the element in the lab.Their results, published in the journal Nature Communications, show that seawater might be the missing source of phosphate, meaning that it co…

The Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe (LCLU) was officially launched on 27 June 2022 at Clare College, Cambridge. The Centre seeks to harness simultaneous breakthroughs in astrophysics, planetology, organic chemistry, biology and cognate disciplines to develop a deeper understanding of life, its emergence, and its distribution in the Unive…

The unusual behaviour of sulphur in Venus’ atmosphere cannot be explained by an ‘aerial’ form of extra-terrestrial life, according to a new study.Researchers from the University of Cambridge used a combination of biochemistry and atmospheric chemistry to test the ‘life in the clouds’ hypothesis, which astronomers have speculated about for decades, …

Early animals formed complex ecological communities more than 550 million years ago, setting the evolutionary stage for the Cambrian explosion, according to a study by Rebecca Eden, an undergraduate student who worked on this as part of her final year project in the Department of Zoology, Emily Mitchell, and Andrea Manica in the open-access journal…

Last year, the Cambridge Initiative for Planetary Science and Life in the Universe (IPLU) opened the first round of the Cambridge Planetary Science and Life in the Universe Research Grants Scheme.The purpose of the scheme is to enable researchers within the School of Physical Sciences of the University of Cambridge and the wider University to devel…

Nikku Madhusudhan, Professor of Astrophysics and Exoplanetary Science at the Institute of Astronomy, is one of five researchers at the University of Cambridge who have won consolidator grants this year from the European Research Council (ERC), Europe’s premiere funding organisation for frontier research.Prof. Madhusudhan's research focuses on under…

Geologists have identified a new way of tracing collisions between asteroids, using microscopic mineral textures, which could greatly enhance our understanding of how planets and asteroids interacted across much of Solar System history.Planetary histories are shaped, and perhaps recorded, by collisions. For example, the Earth-Moon system is thought…

The IPLU Science Day was held on 7 February 2022 to bring together researchers from across the University to discuss their work on planetary science and life in the Universe. We were also joined by our guest speaker, Matteo Brogi from the University of Warwick who spoke about his work on exoplanet atmospheres.Below is a list of talks and posters th…