Tagged: Alien

In the face of climate change, deforestation and biodiversity loss, creating a sustainable version of civilization is one of humanity’s most urgent tasks. But when confronting this immense challenge, we rarely ask what may be the most pressing question of all: How do we know...

We usually look for signs of life on planets like ours—but maybe we are looking in the wrong place According to a new study, there could be more than 121 places where we should look for signs of life. But we are not talking about...

Of the known alien (non-native) species found in Antarctica, a non-biting species of midge currently presents one of the highest risks to terrestrial ecosystems, researchers have found. Eretmoptera murphyi is a flightless midge, which is thought to have been inadvertently transferred from South Georgia (sub-Antarctic), where...

Have you heard the one about the aliens and the pyramids? Or what about the technologically advanced but tragically lost city of Atlantis? Chances are that most of us have encountered at least one such story—a tale that tries to explain the past in a...

Indiscriminate feeding by an alien population of the carnivorous spotted-thighed frog—could severely affect the native biodiversity of southern Australia according to a new study by the University of South Australia. The invasive amphibian—Litoria cyclorhyncha—which has hitchhiked across the Nullarbor from Western Australia—has now established a...

Earth’s oldest fossils may be billions of years old—although such claims are highly controversial. These kinds of discoveries usually start with finding what appear to be preserved outlines of microscopic lifeforms that look similar to microbe fossils found in much younger rocks. The rewards for...

A new spacecraft proposed by scientists at CU Boulder could soon be NASA’s nose in space, sniffing out the environments beyond Earth’s solar system that might host planets with thick atmospheres. Astrophysicist Kevin France is leading the development of that mission, called the Extreme-ultraviolet Stellar...

In recent years, the explosive nature of exoplanet discovery (over 4,164 confirmed so far) has led to renewed interest in the timeless question: “Are we alone in the universe?” Or, as famed Italian physicist Enrico Fermi put it, “Where is everybody?” With so many planets...

In the quest for habitable planets beyond our own, NASA is studying a mission concept called Pandora, which could eventually help decode the atmospheric mysteries of distant worlds in our galaxy. One of four low-cost astrophysics missions selected for further concept development under NASA’s new...

We keep getting reminders that the Milky Way’s planetary diversity dwarfs what we see in our own solar system. The newfound exoplanet TOI-1685 b is yet another case in point. Astronomers found it circling a dim red dwarf star about 122 light-years from Earth. “Circling”...