Extraterrestrial Life

The first discovery of a rocky, watery object beyond our solar system shows how planets might get their oceans

In this excerpt from Five Billion Years of Solitude author Lee Billings chronicles the pioneering scientists who have led the hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence in their quest to answer the haunting question: Is humanity alone in the universe?

NASA calls for rover instrument proposals, but some resent the space lost to storage of samples for retrieval by an unspecified future mission

Although the Kepler space telescope's stabilization system is beyond repair, it has produced reams of data that have yet to be fully searched for exoplanets. John Matson reports.

Since it landed on Mars on August 6, 2012, the Curiosity rover has done photography, geology and roamed a good kilometer. John Matson reports

Science journalist, author and Nature editor Adam Rutherford talks about new book Creation: How Science Is Reinventing Life Itself, which looks at the science of the origin of life and at the emerging science of synthetic biology

Early data from the rover teases out new details of Mars’s atmosphere and how it changed over billions of years

An interactive graphic charts the location and distance to 861 known exoplanets, highlighting those that might hold life

Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina introduces the July 2013 issue of Scientific American

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

News of possible multiple habitable worlds around the red dwarf star Gliese 667 C may be exciting, but researchers caution that certainty about these exoplanets remains elusive

Bill Nye the Science Guy ponders Superman's tonsorial travails, and science education