Extraterrestrial Life

The blockbuster film’s futuristic vision of interplanetary exploration could soon be out of date

Once thought of as a lush alien world teeming with life and later dismissed as an arid, desolate orb, the Red Planet’s salty, liquid water just might aid in the search for extraterrestrial life

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter found evidence that flowing water causes suspicious dark streaks on the Red Planet

The risk of microbial contamination could prevent humans and even robots from visiting the most promising parts of the Red Planet

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.