Extraterrestrial Life

A new effort to bring global cohesion to origins of life science launches, and with it a fresh look at how to crack one of the greatest existential questions.

Instruments on the Rosetta spacecraft’s Philae lander discovered nitrogen and amino acids, key ingredients for life, on comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Private funding for the Arecibo Observatory—the largest single-dish radio telescope in the world—may be a poison pill

The announcement of a newly confirmed exoplanet in Kepler data within its star's "habitable zone" is great news, but also reinforces some misconceptions about what an Earth-like world means.

The planet, Kepler 452 b, is likely rocky and orbits in its star’s habitable zone where liquid water can exist

With a $100-million donation, billionaire Yuri Milner plans to revolutionize the astronomical quest to find alien life

Entrepreneur and former physicist Yuri Milner talks about the just-announced $100-million Breakthrough Listen Project to search for extraterrestrial technological civilizations

Milner, a tech start-up entrepreneur and philanthropist, is partnering with scientists around the world to search for life among the stars

High-resolution images of the icy worlds reveal towering mountains, yawning canyons and perhaps hints of a subsurface ocean

Early this morning, if all has gone well, the first golden age of interplanetary exploration will have come to a close

The newfound planet is 96 light years away, but it's the closest twin to Jupiter astronomers have ever directly seen