Extraterrestrial Life

This week brings a video reconstructed from images of the Philae lander's approach to a comet, and a major new analysis of data from the Cassini mission that bolsters the case for a global, not just local, ocean beneath the icy crust of Enceladus

Living on a small planet in a big universe exposes us to all manner of existential problems, but what are the worst, and what are the weirdest?

A new estimate of Earth's total tree population shows previous estimates were seven times too low, and there are implications for efforts to understand the nature of life here and elsewhere in the universe

A Harvard professor devises a scheme to detect extraterrestrials by tracking how they might commute from one world to the next

NASA's Curiosity rover provides a beautiful, scientifically appetizing view of what's ahead on Mount Sharp on Mars

Campaigns to name exoplanets seem like Shakespearean farce

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