Mars is a big, dusty, dry ball of rock, sand, and dust… we think. Believe it or not, despite the fact that NASA has several rovers on the Red Planet, we’re still not entirely sure how much water is there, and it’s proven incredibly difficult to pin down. Curious geological features that were thought to …
Overall life expectancy in the United States just took a dip for the second time in as many years. The change, which was a relatively small drop from 78.7 years to 78.6 years for a baby born in 2016, is still significant because it marks the first time the national average has fallen in two …
One of humanity’s most burning questions has always been whether or not we’re alone in the universe and whether life exists somewhere other than Earth. It’s a question we simply haven’t been able to answer, at least not yet, but a new research effort from scientists at UCLA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that …
It’s been a rough couple of decades for Pluto. After over a decade of discussion about whether or not it should be considered a planet, the big ball of ice and rock was officially demoted in 2006, and debate has raged over its status ever since. Despite its new, somewhat less prestigious classification as a …
Science fiction has taught us to expect our first contact with alien life to be a momentous event, with radio signals from another civilization filling our airwaves and perhaps even the arrival of an alien spaceship or two. Reality is somewhat less exciting, and scientists have long expected our first discovery of extraterrestrial life to …
Humans, generally speaking, are incredibly interested in the potential existence of intelligent alien life. The idea that an alien civilization exists somewhere in the cosmos has always fascinated us, but we’v yet to find any evidence that our dreams are more than fantasy. Now, scientists have taken a big step towards contacting extraterrestrials, sending a …
Research into the conditions under which life originally formed has given scientists a lot of tantalizing clues in recent years, but a new discovery made by chemists of The Scripps Research Institute may actually hold the answer of how life was created. The team’s work was published in a new paper in the journal Nature. …
Scientists have known for some time that Mars once had lots and lots of water — in fact, some of it is still there — but exactly where it existed on the planet has been pretty difficult to figure out thanks to billions of years of surface erosion. Now, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has discovered …
Humanity has long wondered where we come from, or why life itself even exists in the first place. It’s the ultimate question for many, and countless scientists have devoted their lives to getting closer to the answer. Now, researchers from Canada’s McMaster University, in tandem with scientists from Germany’s Max Planck Institute, believe they may …
The Mars we see today is a far cry from what it looked like many millions or even billions of years ago. The planet’s dry, reddish landscape once had water, and scientists have already discovered evidence that rivers once flowed on its surface. But did life take root there? That’s a question researchers would love …
