The short answer to the question is that we don’t know. The closest planets to Earth are located millions of miles away, so it’s very difficult to go off and find evidence directly. However, we can ...

With basic science and imagination, we can hypothesize what life might develop on other planets James Trefil and Michael Summers You are in a long, dark tunnel walled with solid ice. The only light ...

Is there life on other planets? It's one of the enduring questions of our lifetime, and space agencies like NASA are closer than ever to definitively figuring out what -- if anything -- thrives beyond ...

The James Webb Space Telescope has its sights set on seven planets circling a red dwarf star called Trappist-1, about 40 light-years away. One of them, Trappist-1e, may have temperatures warm enough ...

An exoplanet is what we call planets that exist outside of our own solar system. The first one was discovered in 1992, but as we get more powerful and precise telescopes and instruments, scientists ...

Water is essential for life on Earth. So, the liquid must be a requirement for life on other worlds. For decades, scientists’ definition of habitability on other planets has rested on this assumption.

Some exoplanets, like the one shown in this illustration, may have atmospheres that could make them potentially suitable for life. NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP When astronomers search for planets that ...

Morgan Underwood receives funding from NASA-funded CLEVER Planets (Cycles of Life-Essential Volatile Elements in Rocky Planets) research project. When astronomers search for planets that could host ...

It was one of humanity’s greater vanities that we ever questioned whether there are any planets in the universe beyond the eight in our little solar system. Our sun is a perfectly ordinary star, ...

Most pieces in this series of primers have stayed within the realm of the biological, examining life at the levels of the species, the individual, the organ and the cell. But the first dealt with a ...

The search for alien life often sparks the imagination with images of extraterrestrial beings and strange worlds. However, a new theory is shifting the focus—what if life elsewhere in the universe ...