In a research breakthrough funded by NASA, scientists have synthesized a molecular system that, like DNA, can store and transmit information. This unprecedented feat suggests there could be an alternative to DNA-based life, ...
Astrobiology
Feb 21, 2019
6
610
Earth is so far the only known planet on which life exists—with liquid water and a stable atmosphere. However, the conditions were not conducive to life when it formed. The gas-dust cloud from which all the planets in the ...
Astrobiology
Aug 28, 2025
1
346
In 1960, Dr. Frank Drake led the first Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) experiment at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. In the more than sixty years that have since passed, ...
Astronomy
Dec 15, 2023
0
343
On October 19, 2017, astronomers with the Pan-STARRS survey detected an interstellar object (ISO) passing through our solar system for the first time. The object, known as 1I/2017 U1 'Oumuamua, stimulated significant scientific ...
Astronomy
Jan 15, 2024
2
343
In a recent study, researchers gained new insight into the lives of bacteria that survive by grouping together as if they were a multicellular organism. The organisms in the study are the only bacteria known to do this in ...
Astrobiology
Apr 2, 2025
0
339
In France, the Study and Information Group on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena (GEIPAN), has been investigating unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs)—more commonly known as UFOs—for the past 45 years. Attached to the National ...
Space Exploration
Nov 17, 2022
3
338
To safeguard Earth's biosphere, scientists have turned toward Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the hope that it may help to protect biodiversity. Yet this hope has been challenged by AI's appetite for water and energy rooted ...
In 1960, Freeman Dyson proposed how advanced civilizations could create megastructures that enclosed their system, allowing them to harness all of their star's energy and multiplying the habitable space they could occupy. ...
Astrobiology
Sep 26, 2023
4
336
In 1950, during a lunchtime conversation with colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, famed physicist Enrico Fermi asked the question that launched a hundred (or more) proposed resolutions. "Where is Everybody?"
Astronomy
Jan 3, 2024
27
334
In The Little Prince, the classic novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the titular prince lives on a house-sized asteroid so small that he can watch the sunset any time of day by moving his chair a few steps.
Astronomy
Sep 11, 2019
7
441
