Last update:

Mars may have been habitable much more recently than thought

Evidence suggests Mars could very well have been teeming with life billions of years ago. Now cold, dry, and stripped of what was once a potentially protective magnetic field, the red planet is a kind of forensic scene for ...

Could life at TRAPPIST-1 survive the star's superflares?

The TRAPPIST-1 system is a science-fiction writer's dream. Seven Earth-sized worlds orbit a red dwarf star just 40 light-years away. Three of those worlds are within the habitable zone of the star. The system spans a distance ...

More news

Astrobiology
Another building block of life can handle Venus' sulfuric acid
Astrobiology
Can the 'hard steps' in the evolutionary history of human intelligence be recast with geological thresholds?
Astronomy
How a nearby supernova left its mark on Earth life
Astrobiology
How sweet is the Milky Way? Astrochemist is helping find out
Astrobiology
Potential indicators of life on other planets can be created in a lab
Astrobiology
Those aren't Dyson spheres, they're HotDOGs
Astrobiology
Advanced civilizations will overheat their planets within 1,000 years, researchers suggest
Astrobiology
Could stars hotter than the sun still support life?
Astrobiology
Life might thrive on the surface of Earth for an extra billion years
Astrobiology
Exoplanets could be hiding their atmospheres
Astrobiology
Plants could still grow well under alien skies
Astrobiology
Could interstellar quantum communications involve Earth or solve the Fermi paradox?
Astrobiology
Volcanoes may help reveal interior heat on Jupiter moon
Astrobiology
Detailed model suggests organic matter on Mars was formed from atmospheric formaldehyde
Astrobiology
Scientists scan TRAPPIST-1 for technosignatures
Astrobiology
Projecting what Earth will look like 1,000 years from now could assist in search for advanced civilizations
Space Exploration
Keeping mold out of future space stations
Astrobiology
Could comets have delivered the building blocks of life to ocean worlds like Europa, Enceladus and Titan?
Astrobiology
Why are we so fascinated with aliens?
Astrobiology
Life on alien planets probably wouldn't experience day and night—here's how that may change evolution

Other news

Astronomy
Astronomers discover a new repeating fast radio burst
Environment
Satellite-based evidence supports China's claim of increased forestation to sequester carbon
Biotechnology
RNA-targeting CRISPR reveals that hundreds of noncoding RNAs are essential—not 'junk'
Environment
Microplastics impact cloud formation, likely affecting weather and climate
Earth Sciences
Planting trees at high latitudes in the Arctic could accelerate rather than decelerate global warming, argue scientists
Plants & Animals
Invasive fruit fly species puts parts of Southern California's Orange County under quarantine
Plants & Animals
Atlantic killer whales show dangerously high levels of toxic chemicals
Nanophysics
Quasiperiodicity changes the ground-state properties of 1D narrow-band moiré systems, study demonstrates
Plants & Animals
Researchers discover genetic reason for the red, yellow and orange bills of Australian finches
Analytical Chemistry
Computational chemistry promises to upset traditional methods of chemical synthesis
General Physics
New giant particle collider 'right option for science': Next CERN chief
Evolution
How do brains coordinate activity? From fruit flies to monkeys, scientists discover a universal principle
Molecular & Computational biology
Scientists reveal strigolactone perception mechanism and role in tillering responses to nitrogen
Archaeology
Oldest depictions of fishing discovered in Ice Age art: Camp site reveals 15,800-year-old engravings of fish trapping
Molecular & Computational biology
A causal theory for studying the cause-and-effect relationships of genes paves the way for targeted treatments
Plants & Animals
Mountaineering mice shed light on evolutionary adaptation
Evolution
Evolutionary anthropologist presents hypothesis about why humans are dominating the world over other animals
Archaeology
Earliest evidence of Ephedra use found in 15,000-year-old Moroccan burial
Biotechnology
Artificial receptors made from coronavirus DNA open up new avenues for research
General Physics
Experiment reveals how Earth's magnetic field influences flow in planet's core

Webb telescope probably didn't find life on an exoplanet—yet

Recent reports of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope finding signs of life on a distant planet understandably sparked excitement. A new study challenges this finding, but also outlines how the telescope might verify the presence ...

New findings point to an Earth-like environment on ancient Mars

A research team using the ChemCam instrument onboard NASA's Curiosity rover discovered higher-than-usual amounts of manganese in lakebed rocks within Gale Crater on Mars, which indicates that the sediments were formed in ...

Enceladus spills its guts through strike–slip motion

Over the course of its elliptical orbit, the moon Enceladus is squeezed unevenly by Saturn's gravitational pull and deforms from a spherical shape into a football shape and back again. This cyclic stress causes a phenomenon ...

Will we know if TRAPPIST-1e has life?

The search for extrasolar planets is currently undergoing a seismic shift. With the deployment of the Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), scientists discovered thousands of exoplanets, ...