Tagged: alien life

When Project Blue Book, the infamous U.S. government program to study the possible threat of alien life, was shuttered in 1969, it signaled to most Americans that this danger was all but ludicrous. But in December 2017, The New York Times broke the story that...

Microbiologist Jill Mikucki went to Antarctica last year on a special mission: She was looking for signs of what life on other planets and moons might look like. Her work is part of an effort to understand the origins of life—not just in our world,...

A new estimate of the number of habitable planets orbiting the most common type of stars in our galaxy could have huge consequences for the search for life. According to a recent study, tens of billions of planets around red dwarfs are likely capable of...

WASHINGTON For the first time in history, humanity is within reach of finding Earth-like planets where life exists, but these extraterrestrials may not take the form of intelligent beings, experts say. NASA’s next-generation James Webb Space Telescope set to launch in 2018 and its larger...

In the search for an Earth-like alien world, astronomers have had their eyes set on planets beyond our solar system, but some moons orbiting some of these exoplanets may be just as likely to support life, scientists say. Astronomers have discovered more than 800 exoplanets,...

Can life survive for billions of years longer than the expected timeline on Earth? As scientists discover older and older solar systems, it’s likely that before long we’ll find an ancient planet in the habitable zone. Knowing if life is possible on this exoplanet would...

The possibility for alien life increases when two stars are pushed together by a third, according to new research announced Tuesday. Astronomers at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. developed a model that found a “habitable zone” is larger near two stars that are...

We phoned E.T., but it just rang and rang. A comprehensive study from a number of organizations, including one funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, found no evidence of extraterrestrial life among more than 1,300 stars in close proximity to Earth, a hunt that spanned...

Alien-life hunters should keep an open mind when scanning the atmospheres of exoplanets, a new study stresses. The time-honored strategy of looking for oxygen is indeed a good one, study team members said; after all, it’s tough for this gas to build up in a...

In 1938, Orson Welles narrated a radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds” as a series of simulated radio bulletins of what was happening in real time as Martians arrived on our home planet. The broadcast is widely remembered for creating public panic, although to...