Extraterrestrial Life

The galaxy is teeming with planets. Scientists are straining to peer into their atmospheres to seek signs of extraterrestrial life

Mustardlike plants could be the first Earthlings to call Mars home if NASA decides to let them hitch a ride on the next rover

It's summer in the northern hemisphere of a small, damp, planet orbiting a middle-aged star in a spiral galaxy of matter enjoying a brief heyday before colliding with another galaxy in some 4 billion orbits of the same small, damp, planet.

Within a Mars-like laboratory environment, perchlorate salts known to exist on Mars were able to lower the freezing point enough to get ice to turn to liquid water. Clara Moskowitz reports   

 

Asteroid and comet impacts could have destroyed some habitats for life while also creating new ones for bacteria

Astrobiologists hope that the detection of certain minerals on exoplanets by ever-more-sensitive space telescopes could indicate biochemical processes associated with life

The European Southern Observatory broke ground June 19th to build the world's largest telescope atop the Cerro Armazones mountain in Chile. Clara Moskowitz reports   

 

In 2012, I asked LeVar Burton (who comandeered the Scientific American website as guest editor on Wednesday) if he would join me on a trip across time and space, to another star.

I have a prediction. There is a scientific hypothesis, formulated over 20 years ago, that we will one day look back on, when the evidence is in, and say “Of course that was right!

The release of a long-awaited National Academy of Sciences report on the state and future of the US space program has triggered wide-reaching commentary on what it means to be space-faring.

Waves on Titan indicate bodies of liquid methane may be home to life

Last year I got talking to theoretical physicist Aron Wall about the thermodynamics of quantum gravity. Now that's a deceptively beautiful phrase: in four words, you get three of the deepest areas in modern science.