Illustration of a hypothetical planet covered in water. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. April 7, 2025, Mountain View, CA -- What if we spend decades building advanced telescopes to search for life on other ...

Scientists are revolutionizing the search for extraterrestrial life by challenging our somewhat Earth-centric assumptions about where and how life might exist in the universe. A new review argues that ...

We live in a golden age for space exploration. Scientists are gathering massive amounts of new information and scientific evidence at a record pace. Yet the age-old question remains unanswered: are we ...

"We're arguing that intelligent life may not require a series of lucky breaks to exist." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. The ...

Stephen has degrees in science (Physics major) and arts (English Literature and the History and Philosophy of Science), as well as a Graduate Diploma in Science Communication. Stephen has degrees in ...

The search for life beyond Earth is one of the most profound quests in human history. It began not in laboratories, but in the minds of ancient stargazers who imagined other worlds teeming with beings ...

Antarctica is home to some of the most alien places on Earth. No trees interrupt the horizon. The landscape, all sharp edges, seems to go on forever until it drops off dramatically into the frigid sea ...

The first sign of possible extraterrestrials detected in the cosmos didn't come in the form of little green aliens flying around in saucer-shaped spacecraft. In fact, the life that could be – emphasis ...

We’re celebrating 180 years of Scientific American. Explore our legacy of discovery and look ahead to the future. In the late 1800s Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli pointed a telescope at Mars ...

This April, news reports linked the stinky gas dimethyl sulfide (DMS) in the atmosphere of a distant exoplanet called K2-18b to possible life on it. The reports, prompted by work led by astronomer ...

WASHINGTON — A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine identifies the highest priority science objectives for the first human mission to Mars, and says searching ...