We know the Earth is habitable because—well, here we are. But would it look like a good candidate for life from hundreds of light-years away?
Astronomy
Feb 3, 2016
1
434
Life on other planets would likely be brief and become extinct very quickly, say astrobiologists from The Australian National University (ANU).
Astronomy
Jan 21, 2016
159
15613
We might commonly think of Earth as having an oxygen-dominated atmosphere, but in reality the molecule makes up only a fifth of our air. Most of what surrounds us is nitrogen, at 78 percent. Astrobiologists are beginning ...
Astronomy
Jan 13, 2016
2
64
How many stars like our sun host planets like our Earth? NASA's Kepler Space Telescope continuously monitored more than 150,000 stars beyond our solar system, and to date has offered scientists an assortment of more than ...
Astronomy
Jan 8, 2016
1
871
UNSW Australia astronomers have discovered the closest potentially habitable planet found outside our solar system so far, orbiting a star just 14 light years away.
Astronomy
Dec 16, 2015
15
1200
Insomniacs take heart: Humans get by on significantly less sleep than our closest animal relatives. The secret, according to a new study, is that our sleep is more efficient.
Evolution
Dec 14, 2015
3
264
Imagine two nearby exoplanets orbiting the same sun, each with its own indigenous civilisation. They're going through history either as companionable neighbours or deadly rivals. This is a familiar situation in science fiction, ...
Astronomy
Dec 3, 2015
2
1186
The Cassini spacecraft took a daring plunge into the icy geysers of Saturn's moon Enceladus this week in search of telltale signs of a habitable environment.
Space Exploration
Oct 30, 2015
0
79
They stay up late into the evening, average less than 6.5 hours of sleep and rarely nap.
Other
Oct 15, 2015
6
1350
The search for extraterrestrial life is surely one of the most important tasks we humans can undertake. However, the cosmos is vast and we don't really have any idea which bits of it are actually habitable. But what if we ...
Astronomy
Sep 2, 2015
289
273
