Extraterrestrial Life

Journalist Lee Billings Talks about his book Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search For Life Among the Stars, Part 2 of 2

Journalist Lee Billings Talks about his book Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search For Life Among the Stars, Part 1 of 2

A trove of 715 planets—all members of multiworld systems—joins the list of Kepler's finds
 

Scientific American technology editor Seth Fletcher talks about the recent Consumer Electronics Show and astronomy editor Clara Moskowitz discusses last month's American Astronomical Society conference  

 

Astronomers have come up with a shopping list of what a planet needs to support life, perhaps even better than our Earth does, making them "superhabitable." Michael Moyer reports 

 

The origin of Ceres' intermittent plumes is unclear

NASA's long-term vision, released by the agency's astrophysics division, restates its broad and popular themes for scientists to pursue including "Are We Alone?" and "How Did We Get Here?"

Astronomers may have discovered a moon orbiting an alien planet, but the signal is far from definitive

An ancient lake and evidence for flowing water today aid hopes that microbes evolved on the Red Planet

The previously unknown microbe was tough enough to survive stringent sterilization at two locations. Might it survive a trip to Mars?

Where did the Red Planet’s carbon dioxide blanket and liquid surface water go? NASA’s Maven mission will launch next week to investigate

NASA’s premier planet-hunting scope turns up 647 possible Earth-sized worlds in the Milky Way