NASA chief says the world may not be ready for Martian life
NASA’s Mars 2020 mission will attempt to answer a number of questions about the Red Planet, and one of the most pressing is the search …
Life
Scientists argue that contaminating Mars with microbes might be a good thing
At some point in the not-so-distant future, mankind will embark on a mission to another planet. That planet will be Mars, the largely barren, dusty …
Scientists just proved that life on Earth stretches back at least 3.5 billion years
Determining how far back in Earth’s history life took root has been an immense challenge for scientists over the years. Finding fossils dating back tens …
Venus may have once been habitable, but a mysterious event changed that
Today, the planet Venus is incredibly hostile to life as we know it. With surface temperatures near 500 degrees Fahrenheit and a thick cloud layer …
Hubble just detected water vapor around a distant exoplanet
In the ongoing search for life beyond Earth, astronomers studying distant exoplanets are looking for a few key ingredients. For starters, a planet has to …
Earth might not be the best place for life after all
In the ongoing search for worlds outside of our solar system, scientists often compare newly-discovered planets with our own as they offer educated guesses about …
Mars was once warm and rainy before turning frigid, study finds
Scientists have learned a lot about Mars in recent years, and based on observations from the fancy hardware NASA has sent to the Red Planet …
NASA confirms plans to send spacecraft to Jupiter’s frozen ocean moon
Astronomers dedicate their careers to unlocking the mysteries of space, and while not all of them are constantly searching for evidence of extraterrestrial life, finding …
NASA’s methane discovery on Mars just got a whole lot more interesting
Back in late June, NASA revealed that sensors on its Curiosity rover were returning alarmingly high readings of methane that came seemingly out of nowhere. …
NASA’s Curiosity rover stumbled upon a Martian rock that tells an incredible story
We tend to think of rocks as being, well, pretty boring. We find them pretty much everywhere here on Earth, and while some are neat …
NASA’s exoplanet hunter just spotted a ‘super Earth’ orbiting a nearby star
In its 15 months of service, NASA’s TESS exoplanet-hunting satellite has racked up many exciting exoplanet discoveries, but few show promise in the search for …
New Mars rover discovery hints at life, but we’re not there yet
NASA’s Mars missions have provided mankind with a wealth of knowledge about our dusty orange neighbor, but signs of life have been hard to come …
NASA’s Curiosity just stumbled upon evidence of an ancient Martian lake
NASA’s Curiosity rover is providing critical insights into what Mars may have been like long ago, and one of its latest discoveries helps support the …
Researcher claims life may still exist on Mars, but it’s probably hiding
As far as we know, there’s no life that currently exists on Mars. Missions to the Red Planet have yielded tantalizing clues that life may …
Massive dust storms may have sucked Martian water away
Mars as we know it today is a mostly dry, dusty place with a few pockets of ice in remote regions. It’s barren and we’re …
NASA’s TESS exoplanet hunter found its first Earth-size planet, but you wouldn’t want to visit
NASA’s TESS exoplanet hunting telescope has been on the job for less than a year, but it’s already racking up some impressive discoveries. Following the …
Nearby exoplanet may have the potential to support life
Finding planets outside of our solar system is a challenge, and determining the size, composition, and surface conditions of such planets is more difficult still. …
ESA finds evidence of massive Mars lakes where life may have once thrived
Imaging the possibility of life one existing on the surface of Mars got a whole lot easier once scientists realized the planet was once covered …
Scientists built a new rover that’s learning here on Earth how to search for life on Mars
NASA has learned a lot about Mars thanks to the efforts of its high-tech rovers. We’ve learned a lot about the composition of the planet’s …
New fossils might be the earliest moving organisms on Earth
If you go back far enough in the fossil record — past the cavemen, dinosaurs, and even the earliest creatures to crawl out of Earth’s …
China wants to know if plants will grow on the far side of the Moon
Much of the focus for NASA and many other space organizations around the world has been on Mars for a while now. Sending a crewed …
Humans are getting bigger, and that means more strain on the world’s food supply
Everyone knows that obesity is a major health crisis in the United States and many other countries, but humans aren’t just getting fatter, we’re also …
There might maybe possibly be life left on Mars after all, maybe
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Scientists studying Mars think there might be life lurking on the Red Planet but can’t prove it …
Mars may have supported underground life, but it was a long time ago
When mankind first noticed Mars in the sky there were surely plenty of people who wondered if life was roaming around on its surface. In …
A massive ancient volcano wiped out roughly 90 percent of all life on Earth just 250 million years ago
It might be hard to imagine today, but life on Earth hasn’t always had an go of things. The volcano that is thought to have …
Researchers spot what looks like a standing ‘lake’ of water on Mars
The hunt for evidence of past or present life on Mars has gotten a number of boosts in recent decades, including the discovery of what …
Scientists claim that Earth’s Moon may have once supported life
In the never-ending search for life beyond Earth, astronomers tend to look far, far away, but it seems our closest neighbor may have once been …
Oops! NASA might have destroyed proof of life on Mars on accident decades ago
Finding proof that life once existed on Mars would be one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs in the history of mankind, which is why NASA …
The possibility of alien life on Saturn’s moon Enceladus just got much more realistic
Scientists continue to peer deeper into the galaxy in the search for exoplanets that may host alien life, but our best chance of finding extraterrestrial …
Will we even recognize alien life when we see it? NASA isn’t so sure
Decades of science fiction movies, tv shows, and video games have led us to believe that when we spot another planet that has life we’re …
