Search
Astrobiology
Does humanity have a moral imperative to seed life on lifeless worlds? And should we avoid colonizing a planet if life already exists there?
The cycles of life all rely on the dynamism of the Earth's crust.
A next-generation instrument on a delayed rover may be the key to answering the question of life on Mars.
The problem of the electroweak horizon haunts the standard model of cosmology and beckons us to ask how deep a rethink the model may need.
Back in 1990, we hadn't discovered a single planet outside of our Solar System. Here are 10 facts that would've surprised every astronomer.
Mars, the red planet, was a world we knew almost nothing about until our first spacecraft visited it. In just ~50 years, how far we've come!
Perhaps we should be searching for “other Mercurys” rather than “other Earths.”
Mercury, Venus, and Mars are all uni-plate planets, and may always have been. Here's what's known about why Earth, uniquely, has plate tectonics.
The road to intelligent life is a series of hard steps.
We may have discovered alien life already but rejected the evidence too quickly because it seemed false at first glance.
Some microbes can withstand Earth's most inhospitable corners, hinting that life may be able to survive similarly extreme conditions on other worlds.
What do you call it when the Earth shakes for three decades?
The Universe certainly formed stars, at one point, for the very first time. But we haven't found them yet. Here's what everyone should know.
A conversation with an advanced alien species is likely to be simple and to take 1,000 years. It might also be dangerous.
If life is common in the Universe, then where is everybody? Known as the Fermi Paradox, a new project may help solve the riddle.
In the early 20th century, a young biochemist named Alexander Oparin set out to connect “the world of the living” to “the world of the dead.”
On Earth, microbial growth is common in lava tubes no matter the location and climate, whether it’s ice-volcano interactions in Iceland or hot, sand-floored lava tubes in Saudi Arabia.
Red dwarf stars were supposed to be inhospitable. But TOI-700, now with at least two potentially habitable worlds, is quite the exception.
6mins
How did complex systems emerge from chaos? Physicist Sean Carroll explains.
If aliens are driven mostly by biological imperatives, humanity could be in big trouble if we ever meet technologically advanced beings.
Dead whales inspire a way to find extraterrestrial life on Mars.
Compared to Earth, Mars is small, cold, dry, and lifeless. But 3.4 billion years ago, a killer asteroid caused a Martian megatsunami.
From astrobiology to geology, a Moon base could serve as a laboratory unlike anything on Earth.
Organic molecules can be produced by living or non-living systems. But the recent findings are very intriguing.
Most exoplanets have been found around single stars via the transit method. But binary star systems might contain even more of them.
NASA is creating a planet habitability index, and Earth may not be at the top. With our current data, ranking habitability is guesswork.
Yes, NASA's Perseverance rover found organics on Mars. So did Curiosity. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean anything in the search for life.
One book will gather all topics on the search for life in the Cosmos.
Venus Life Finder could launch as early as 2023.