Extraterrestrial Life

Aliens Might Use High-Powered Lasers to Let Us Know Where They Are

SETI scientists are searching for extraterrestrial messages sent via laser beam.

Inverse

What Would Alien Life Mean for Catholicism? The Vatican’s Chief Astronomer Explains

He also digs into Galileo, icy moons, and the relationship between science and religion.

Vox

The Urgency of Agency

Our consciousness gets in the way of thinking about evolution.

Life, Unbounded, Scientific American

Astronomers Get Serious About Alien Technosignatures

The hunt for alien technosignatures heats up.

Forbes

What If Life Did Not Originate on Earth?

The Curiosity rover recently discovered methane on Mars, which could be a sign of life. Gary Ruvkun, a molecular biologist and professor of genetics at Harvard, wants to search for DNA in space.

The New Yorker

The Pitfalls of Searching for Alien Life

Scientists looking for evidence of extraterrestrials can draw media attention but also cynical, even hostile, reactions from their colleagues.

Undark

Interstellar Object ‘Oumuamua Almost Definitely Not Aliens, We Think

A review of all the data we have on the strange object, which came hurtling through our solar system in 2017, has concluded that everything about it can be explained by natural processes.

New Scientist

Looking for the Lights of Alien Cities

The search for ET is getting more sophisticated.

Cosmos

New NASA Mission Will Fly Titan’s Frigid Skies to Search for Life’s Beginnings

Dragonfly, a nuclear-powered drone, will visit Saturn’s largest moon in the 2030s.

Scientific American

Search for Space Aliens Comes Up Empty, But Extraterrestrial Life Could Still Be Out There

The “Breakthrough Listen” initiative listened in on 1,300 star systems and found no sign of E.T. But the search is set to expand.

MACH, NBC News

With a Poof, Mars Methane Is Gone

NASA’s Curiosity rover detected a belch of natural gas on the red planet. The gas has since dissipated, leaving only a mystery.

The New York Times

Life ≠ Alive

A cat is alive, a sofa is not: that much we know. But a sofa is also part of life. Information theory tells us why.

Aeon

The Interiors of Exoplanets May Well Hold the Key to Their Habitability

Determining whether a distant planet is truly habitable may require an understanding of its inner dynamics — which will for sure be a challenge to achieve.

Many Worlds

NASA Rover on Mars Detects Puff of Gas That Hints at Possibility of Life

The Curiosity mission’s scientists picked up the signal this week, and are seeking additional readings from the red planet.

The New York Times

Exoplanets With Complex Life May Be Very Rare, Even in Their “Habitable Zones”

The term “habitable zone” can be a misleading one, since it describes a limited number of conditions on a planet to make it hospitable to life.

Many Worlds

Wings May All Be Universal. Smarts, Not So Much

Many astrobiologists believe life gets going easily on Earthlike planets and so will be widespread in the universe. It is then possible that some of those planets might have evolved intelligent beings.

Cosmos

A Gas Could Hint at Signs of Life on Mars. Why Hasn’t a New Spacecraft Found It?

Two spacecraft have detected methane in the Martian air. But the Trace Gas Orbiter, with more sensitive instruments, has come up empty.

The New York Times

Paul Davies on the Origin of Life and the Evolution of Cancer

Physicist Paul Davies is interested in some of the biggest questions that we can ask. What is life? How did the universe begin? How will it end? And are we alone?

The Life Scientific, BBC Radio 4

‘Oumuamua, Our First Interstellar Visitor, May Have Been a Comet After All

New research flags jets of water vapor — rather than alien technology — as the source of the mysterious object’s anomalous motions.

Scientific American

Where Are All the Aliens? Struggling and Hustling, Just Like Us

Conventional wisdom has it that aliens should be either everywhere, or nowhere. A new model suggests they can be both.

Popular Science

DNA Gets a New — and Bigger — Genetic Alphabet

DNA is spelled out with four letters, or bases. Researchers have now built a system with eight. It may hold clues to the potential for life elsewhere in the universe and could also expand our capacity to store digital data on Earth.

The New York Times