
All Aboard the 100 Year Starship
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.

All Aboard the 100 Year Starship
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.

The Logic and Beauty of Cosmological Natural Selection
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!


Space: A New Hope or an Old Dream?
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.

Lake on Saturn’s Largest Moon May Have Waves
Waves on Titan indicate bodies of liquid methane may be home to life

Time Machines Would Run Afoul of the Second Law of Thermodynamics
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.

Watch the Earth From Space, Live!
Live streaming video by Ustream It doesn’t get much better than this (well, of course being in space might be better, albeit colder).

Exomoons Can Spoof Exoplanet Biosignatures
Astronomers hope that one day soon we’ll obtain a spectrum of light that might tell us whether or not an Earth-sized exoplanet harbors life.

Charles Darwin and the Early Search for Extraterrestrial Life
In August 1881 the journal “Science” published an article with a letter exchange by two amateur geologist – British Charles R.

First Earth-Size Planet That Could Support Life Found
NASA's Kepler space telescope has identified a planet that is both similar in size to Earth and within the habitable zone of its sun

Liquid Ocean Sloshes under Saturn Moon’s Icy Crust, Cassini Evidence Shows
The new evidence of liquid water on Enceladus raises hopes that the moon could host extraterrestrial life

The Unstoppable Extinction And Fermi’s Paradox
There has been a lot of discussion recently about the evidence that we are currently within a period of mass extinction, the kind of event that will show up in the fossil record a few million years from now as a clear discontinuity, a radical change in the diversity of life on the planet.

Europa’s Water Geysers Entice Scientists to Send a Probe—but Can NASA Do It on the Cheap?
The agency wants to send a robotic mission to Jupiter's enigmatic moon for less than $1 billion. Supporters say that one of the solar system’s most promising places to find life deserves a bigger investment