Extraterrestrial Life

Here in North America, we are in the midst of a tetrad of lunar eclipses, the second one visible Wednesday morning. A tetrad of lunar eclipses means that there are four total lunar eclipses in a row.

Looking up into the bright Mojave sky in 2004, I strained to keep my eyes on the tiny spaceship 50,000 feet up. "Three, two, one... release, release, release!" came the call over the loudspeakers.

Excitement is building — at least in science circles — for the upcoming announcements of the 2014 Nobel Prizes, along with the inevitable speculation about who might be among this year’s winners.

Catharine Conley’s job is to watch out for cross-contamination in the solar system

If biologically important organic molecules like amino acids could form in interstellar space, the implications would be enormous. On the Earth we find plenty of amino acid species inside certain types of meteorites, so at a minimum these compounds can form during the assembly of a proto-stellar, proto-planetary system (at least this one) and end [...]

The Mangalyaan probe, the country's first mission to another world, has entered the Red Planet's orbit

A couple of years ago, one of my thesis mentors sought visually impaired scientists working at a major space science agency in the United States.

NASA’s MAVEN orbiter arrived at Mars to study how gas escapes from around the planet
 

The leader of the James Webb Space Telescope must have clearance that allows access to the highest level of classified information, according to a NASA want ad

Books and recommendations from Scientific American

This post is one in a series covering, and expanding on, topics in the book The Copernicus Complex (Scientific American/FSG).           The conversation usually goes like this: Do you think we’re alone in the universe?