Beyond that, in the decades to come, we might be able to see the colours of an exoplanet’s surface, and determine if plant life might be present there. And then we can search for changes in a planet’s ...

When it comes to the space sciences, nothing is quite as exciting as the search for alien life, and NASA thinks it has a good idea of where to look.

Scientists might have just found Earth's icy, distant cousin a few hundred million light-years away. HD 137010 b is one of ...

Looking for molecular evidence of life on other worlds is tricky, but a test based on the reactivity of carbon compounds ...

Recent observations suggest that scientists have identified potential microbial fingerprints in the atmospheres of other planets, raising intriguing questions about the possibility of alien life ...

Astronomers have recently detected potential signs of microbial life on the exoplanet K2-18b, an ocean-covered world located 120 light years from Earth. This discovery suggests that the planet could ...

Life may not get blasted off any of the known "super-Earth" worlds as readily as it can from our planet, scientists find. The discovery suggests that any intelligent aliens that develop on such ...

For decades, scientists have grappled with a profound question known as the Fermi Paradox: if the galaxy is teeming with the potential for extraterrestrial life, why is the cosmos so quiet? A new ...

The afternoon of 7 August 1996 isn’t a time that sticks in many people’s minds. But if things had worked out differently, it might have been etched into our collective memory. At 1.15pm, US President ...