Is there really any life 'out there'?

Mankind should not assume that it will definitely find life on alien planets according to a hypothesis being presented at the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of science, this week. Professor Charles Cockell, Director ...

NASA designs new space telescope optics

Although hundreds of planets orbiting other stars have been discovered in the past 15 years, we cannot yet answer the age-old question of whether any of these planets are capable of sustaining life. However, new NASA technology ...

First 'directed' SETI search comes up empty

(Phys.org)—Researchers working on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project have completed their first "directed" search of a part of space and report in a paper they've uploaded to the preprint server ...

13 light years away: Earth-like planets are right next door

Using publicly available data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have found that six percent of red dwarf stars have habitable, Earth-sized planets. Since ...

Astrobiology research: Life possible on extrasolar moons

(Phys.org)—In their search for habitable worlds, astronomers have started to consider exomoons, or those likely orbiting planets outside the solar system. In a new study, a pair of researchers has found that exomoons are ...

Kepler mission discovers 461 new planet candidates

(Phys.org)—NASA's Kepler mission Monday announced the discovery of 461 new planet candidates. Four of the potential new planets are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's "habitable zone," the region ...

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