Planet Earth has been around for the past 4.5 billion years or so: about the last third of the Universe's history. Through a combination of geology and paleontology, we can trace the existence of life ...

Science fiction crawls with intelligent BEMs (bug-eyed monsters) and humanoids (manlike creatures) that live on planets revolving about distant stars. Most fact-fancying scientists are far more ...

Recent discoveries of planets similar to Earth in size and proximity to the planets’ respective suns have sparked scientific and public excitement about the possibility of also finding Earth-like life ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American I don't often write about my own research on ...

An astronomer says he’s identified the odds of intelligent life existing elsewhere in the universe based on an analysis of both the likelihood of life developing quickly within a planet’s life cycle ...

Does the existence of life on Earth tell us anything about the probability of abiogenesis — the origin of life from inorganic substances — arising elsewhere? That’s a question that has confounded ...

Biosignature probability maps from CNN models and statistical ecology data. The colors in a) indicate the probability of biosignature detection. In b) a visible image of a gypsum dome geologic feature ...

Human beings have long looked to the stars and hoped that alien life might look back at us. Yet the truth is that the first extraterrestrial life we discover is far more likely to be microbial — a ...

"The existence of an ocean of this size means a higher potential for life." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Breaking space news, ...

PROF. H. F. BLUM has given reasons for believing that the probability of the development of life up to the present human cultural level on our planet is unlikely to exceed 10 −18 (ref. 1). His ...