Extraterrestrial Life

The Lone Signal project is taking a different approach to discovering extraterrestrials: sending messages into deep space

Upcoming cosmic alignments will give planet hunters an opportunity to intensify the search for potential exoplanets

Newly discovered microbes breathe rocket fuel

Isotopic analysis of fluid seeping from an isolated Canadian underground reservoir indicates that the water has been sequestered for at least 1.5 billion years. Sophie Bushwick reports

The chemical fingerprints of lunar rocks suggest that Earth and the moon were born with their water already present

NASA's orbiting Kepler telescope recently spotted three exoplanets in or near their stars' so-called habitable zones, the temperate region where a planet could accommodate liquid water. John Matson reports

The Kepler spacecraft has discovered a pair of exoplanets in a star's habitable zone and close to Earth in size, bringing scientists closer to finding a true twin of our planet

A relatively low-cost space mission, scheduled to launch in 2017, will attempt to identify planets circling nearby stars

At a recent scientific conference in Los Angeles, scientists explored the possibility of Mars being habitable, or even inhabited by microbes, in the present day

Comet Pan-STARRS will take about 110,000 years to orbit the sun after this first swing through the inner solar system

New observations by NASA's Curiosity rover suggest that microbial life could have survived on Mars in the distant past

New studies assess the possibility of detecting biomarkers with planned ground- and space-based telescopes