Extraterrestrial Life

What If There Was More Than One Origin of Life?

How life emerged and evolved is often seen as a road that has gone in one direction for 4 billion years. That might not have actually been what happened.

SYFY Wire

Planet Earth May Be Far More Special Than We Think

Very few potentially habitable planets meet the conditions necessary to produce an atmosphere suitable for the evolution of complex life as we know it, study says.

BBC Science Focus Magazine

Can ET See Us? Study Finds Many Stars With Prime Earth View

Astronomers took a technique used to look for life on other planets and flipped it around — so instead of looking to see what’s out there, they tried to see what places could see us. There’s a lot.

Associated Press

Aliens Wouldn’t Need Warp Drives to Take Over an Entire Galaxy, Simulation Suggests

A new computer simulation shows that a technologically advanced civilization, even when using slow ships, can still colonize an entire galaxy in a modest amount of time.

Gizmodo

If We Ever Encounter Aliens, They Will Resemble AI and Not Little Green Martians

Artificial intelligence aliens may not be as appealing as those who are warm-blooded and squishy, but it’s probably more accurate to imagine them that way.

The Guardian

Chemists Design Alien Life Detector

An algorithm for scoring molecules based on their complexity could help identify molecules that come from extraterrestrial life.

Chemical & Engineering News

Could Humans Have Contaminated Mars With Life?

Humanity has sent around 30 spacecraft and landers to the Red Planet since the space age began. Now, we know which microbes might have survived the trip, says geneticist Christopher Mason.

BBC Future

Stars That Race Through Space at Nearly the Speed of Light

Excerpt: Some are blasted out of galaxies by interactions with black holes; others, which orbit supermassive black holes, can smash together in titanic explosions.

Scientific American

What Does It Mean To Be Alive?

Science writer Carl Zimmer explores the complicated search for a definition of life.

Science Friday

Why Extraterrestrial Life May Not Seem Entirely Alien

The zoologist Arik Kershenbaum argues that because some evolutionary challenges are truly universal, life throughout the cosmos may share certain features.

Quanta Magazine

NASA Mars Rover Landing Seeks New Alien Life. Here’s How That Would Change the World

The discovery of long-expired Martian bacteria would permanently change humanity’s view of its own importance.

THINK, NBC News

Is It a Planet? Astronomers Spy Promising Potential World Around Alpha Centauri

The candidate could be a “warm Neptune” or a mirage. Either way, it signals the dawn of a revolution in astronomy.

Scientific American

Life on Venus? The Picture Gets Cloudier

Despite doubts from many scientists, a team of researchers who said they had detected an unusual gas in the planet’s atmosphere were still confident of their findings.

The New York Times

Have We Already Been Visited by Aliens?

An eminent astrophysicist argues that signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life have appeared in our skies. What’s the evidence for his extraordinary claim?

The New Yorker

A New Frontier Is Opening in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life

The reason we haven’t found life elsewhere in the universe is simple: We haven’t really looked until now.

The Washington Post

Let’s Search for Alien Probes, Not Just Alien Signals

“Multimessenger” SETI would broaden the quest to find celestial companions.

Scientific American

What Alien Life Could Teach Us About Humanity

Have we found extraterrestrial life but not recognized it?

Freethink

Potential Signs of Life on Venus Are Fading as Astronomers Downgrade Their Original Claims

Amid mounting criticism, researchers find far lower levels of mysterious phosphine in reanalysis of telescope data.

Science

How Many Alien Civilizations Are Out There? A New Galactic Survey Holds a Clue

The Milky Way is full of habitable real estate, with roughly half of all sunlike stars hosting Earth-size worlds that could be friendly to life.

National Geographic

Promising Sign of Life on Venus Might Not Exist After All

The detection of phosphine gas in the clouds of Venus — a possible sign of life — might be due to a fluke in data processing, new analyses suggest.

National Geographic

Scientists Find Possible Sign Of Life On Venus

Traces of a gas in Venus’ clouds could indicate some form of life may exist there.

Axios