Getting to know the Goldilocks planet

NASA's Kepler spacecraft is discovering a veritable avalanche of alien worlds.  Recent finds include planets with double suns, massive "super-Earths" and "hot Jupiters," and a miniature solar system.  The variety ...

Martian water vs. the volcanoes

For decades NASA has been "following the water" on Mars with hopes of finding signs of alien life there; or at least signs that future colonists won't die of thirst. Now a Texas geologist has dared to revive an old, almost ...

Sulfurous signs of life

Any sulfurous molecules that astronomers spot on alien worlds might be a way to reveal whether or not those distant planets host life, researchers suggest.

How to learn a star's true age

(PhysOrg.com) -- For many movie stars, their age is a well-kept secret. In space, the same is true of the actual stars. Like our Sun, most stars look almost the same for most of their lives. So how can we tell if a star is ...

Try failed stars for alien life

The search for alien life usually focuses on planets around other stars. But a lesser-known possibility is that life has sprung up on planets that somehow were ejected from their original solar systems and became free-floating ...

NASA spots 54 potentially life-friendly planets

An orbiting NASA telescope is finding whole new worlds of possibilities in the search for alien life, including more than 50 potential planets that appear to be in the habitable zone.

Volunteers to hunt for 'lost planets'

(PhysOrg.com) -- The public are being asked to help Oxford University astronomers find planets orbiting other stars which may have been 'lost' in the data from over 100,000 stars. Volunteers could even find 'Earth-like' alien ...

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