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wildcat2030:

THE last life on Earth will perish in 2.8 billion years, scorched by the dying sun as it swells to become a red giant. For about a billion years before that, the only living things will be single-celled organisms drifting in isolated pools of hot, salty water. A grim outlook, sure, but there’s a silver lining for today’s alien-hunters. The model that predicts these pockets of life on future Earth also hints that the habitability of planets around other stars is more varied than previously believed, offering new hope for finding life in unlikely places. Using what we know about Earth and the sun, researchers in the UK calculated a timeline for the phases of life on our planet as the sun expands to become a red giant. Previous studies modelled this scenario for Earth as a whole, but Jack O’Malley-James at the University of St Andrews, UK, and his colleagues wanted to consider the possibility that life might survive in a few extreme habitats. Sun-like stars of different sizes age at different rates, so the team also looked at how long simple and complex life might thrive around smaller and larger stars. “Habitability is not so much a set attribute of a planet, but more something that has a lifetime of its own,” says O’Malley-James. (via Last life on Earth: microbes will rule the far future - life - 01 November 2012 - New Scientist)

artnet:

Nazi Loot At Auction

A disputed artwork by Russian artist Wassily Kandinksy will be auctioned at Christie’s next week after the grandchildren of a collector, who said it was stolen from her by the Nazis, agreed to share the sale proceeds with the current owner.

The 1923 abstract painting Zwei Schwarze Flecke will be auctioned in New York at Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale on Nov 7, 2012, where it is estimated to fetch US $1.8 mil - 2.4 mil. 

The Kandinsky work once belonged to Sophie Lissitzky- Kueppers, a German art historian. Her grandchildren say the watercolor was one of 16 works that Lissitzky-Kueppers loaned to Hanover’s Provinzialmuseum. Those works were later seized by Nazis and termed “degenerate,” reports Bloomberg. 

Browse Christie’s entire Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale.