Search for Life

A Swarm of Swimming Robots to Search for Life Under the Ice on Europa

When Galileo pointed his telescope at Jupiter 400 years ago, he saw three blobs of light around the giant planet,…

2 years ago

Does the Entire Planet Have a Mind of its Own?

What is humanity? Do our minds set us apart from the rest of nature and from the rest of Earth?…

2 years ago

Astronomers Scan the Center of the Milky Way for Any Sign of Intelligent Civilizations. Nothing but Silence.

Are there civilizations somewhere else in the Universe? Somewhere else in the Milky Way? That's one of our overarching questions,…

2 years ago

Remember When Life was Found in a Martian Meteorite? Turns out, it was Just Geology

The Alan Hills meteorite is a part of history to Mars aficionados. It came from Mars and meteorite hunters discovered…

2 years ago

Is That a Fossil on Mars? Non-Biological Deposits can Mimic Organic Structures

There's nothing easy about searching for evidence of life on Mars. Not only do we somehow have to land a…

2 years ago

Greenland’s Ice Sheet is Similar in Many Ways to the Solar System’s Icy Worlds and Can Teach Us How to Search for Life

Many regions on Earth are temperate, nutrient-rich, stable environments where life seems to thrive effortlessly. But not all of Earth.…

2 years ago

Rogue Planets Could be Habitable

The search for potentially habitable planets is focused on exoplanets—planets orbiting other stars—for good reason. The only planet we know…

2 years ago

The Interior of Enceladus Looks Really Great for Supporting Life

When NASA's Voyager spacecraft visited Saturn's moon Enceladus, they found a body with young, reflective, icy surface features. Some parts…

3 years ago

This is What Perseverance’s Landing Site Looked Like Billions of Years Ago. See Why it’s Such a Compelling Target?

Today is a milestone in NASA's Perseverance mission to Mars. At 1:40 pm Pacific time today, the rover will have…

3 years ago

Here’s a Clever Idea, Looking for the Shadows of Trees On Exoplanets to Detect Multicellular Life

That's the kind of headline that can leave us scratching our heads. How can you see tree shadows on other…

3 years ago