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This newly discovered planet is just 22 light-years away. Its discoverers are calling it the "new best candidate" to support water, and possibly life. The planet's unique features could even make it the ideal home for creatures like the Predator! More »
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There could be over 150 billion planets in our galaxy alone, which makes the chances of life on other words look very solid indeed. But there's one snag: the universe's most common stars might not support life at all. More »
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Got a bad case of the Mondays? The dulcet tones of Sir David Attenborough are just what you need to get out of your funk and back on your feet. Here's to the week ahead, everybody! More »
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A few weeks ago, NASA scientists announced they'd discovered something completely new on the surface of the Red Planet. Now they know what it is —and they're calling it the most powerful evidence for liquid water on Mars ever encountered by the Opportunity Rover. More »
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All life on Earth is related, which means we all must share a single common evolutionary ancestor. And now it appears that this ancestor might have been a single, planet-spanning organism that lived in a time that predates the development of survival of the fittest. More »
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We've officially found over 700 exoplanets, and with so many worlds to explore the big question is which, if any, could support life. But should we be looking for Earth-like planets — or is life hiding on far more alien worlds? More »
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Now known as one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, the giant arctic island of Greenland might actually hold the birthplace of all life on Earth. Yes, all life on Earth might well have sprang from Greenlandic mud volcanoes. More »
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We know that ancient organisms crawled out of the sea onto land, not the other way round. We know that the earliest life predates the existence of true continents. But life might just have began on land after all...sort of. More »
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The geological evidence suggests that there have been liquid oceans on Earth dating back at least 3.5 billion years, a fact that was crucial to the emergence of the very first lifeforms. The only problem is that that's utterly impossible. More »
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About 4.4 billion years ago, a Mars-sized planet crashed into Earth. This cataclysmic event actually made Earth melt, and the fallout from the collision became the Moon. So how did Earth's earliest organic molecules hang on during these apocalyptic times? More »
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Planets are sometimes ejected from their solar systems as other planets or passing stars whip up extreme gravitational forces. These starless worlds become cosmic wanderers, freezing slowly to death in the vast emptiness of space. But even that doesn't have to be the end - under the right conditions, these wandering planets could sustain life for billions and billions of years. More »
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How did a bunch of lifeless molecules transform themselves into living cells, turning the ancient, dead Earth into a planet teeming with life? It's an incredibly difficult question to answer, but a new model might explain part of the story. More »
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Life has been around for billions of years, but it's only about 580 million years ago that organisms start leaving behind fossils. But our modern genes provide a window into the past, revealing how life developed billions of years ago. More »
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We all know how important carbon and oxygen are in the development of life on Earth. But millions of years ago, there wouldn't have been enough oxygen for animals to exist. What changed? More »
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Saturn's moon Titan could hold life's building blocks in its hazy atmosphere. New simulations reveal amino acids and nucleotides could be forming there - and that perhaps we should look to the atmosphere for the source of life on Earth. More »
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The old approach to finding alien life, looking for radio signals, may be played out. New approaches are getting a lot more public attention, judging from a new Economist article and Paul Davies' new book, The Eerie Silence. More »
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What was Albert Einstein thinking on the day he died? These newly released pictures of his desk may provide a clue. LIFE Magazine has held onto them for years, along with a picture of the doctor who removed Einstein's brain. More »
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The crime drama Past Life, about how we all have murdered souls inside us trying to solve their past-life crimes, or something, was canned after only three episodes. Let's hope this makes room for an animal psychic crime procedural. [TVGuide] More »
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Astronomers have made a sweet discovery in their search for life on other planets. A team at University College London has detected a sugar molecule that has long been associated with the origin of life in a potentially-habitable region of the galaxy. This could increase our chances of finding distant planets with life. More »
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Morning! A producer of Fringe shared some details about what to expect from the rest of the season — and he hinted that the relationship between Walter and Peter may not be what you think. Meanwhile, Heroes actor Jack Coleman let out some major spoilers for a pivotal HRG episode in next spring's "Fugitives" storyline. Also, we discovered just how the Magneto movie may contradict some of the classic X-Men comics. There are also some spoilers for Life On Mars, Knight Rider, Pushing Daisies, Smallville and Lost. Brace yourself for maximum spoilage! More »
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This week marks the debut of Seth Green's latest Robot Chicken Star Wars special, and we've got the first laugh-out-loud clip from it. Also, there's a sweeps-month shock on Terminator, Woolsey's up for his performance evaluation and it's up to the Stargate Atlantis crew to save his job, True Blood's Lafayette gets political and Fringe is back. More »
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We long ago declared Saturn's moon Titan the one of the awesomest moons in the solar system (though this assertion was controversial). Granted, it’s freezing cold, but its Earth-like features have set astrobiologists dreaming and made it one of the most popular extraplanetary settings in science fiction. And a new discovery about this infamous lunar body further suggests that Titan has the capacity to produce life. More »
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Using nothing more than a battery-powered device that emits a beam of ultraviolet light, future robotic explorers will be able to identify the building blocks of life on other planets and moons. A group of scientists in the U.S. and the U.K. have developed a small device which uses a low-power laser beam to sweep over rocks or soil, identifying identify organic substances that are the signposts of life as we know it. Specifically, the little machine "sees" life by causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), often called the earliest form of organic matter in the universe, to light up. The discovery is so promising that it's likely to be launched out with the next generation of Mars rovers. More »
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Anyone who reads comic books knows that no one is ever really dead. Every character from Superman to Green Lantern has returned to life from the whereverafter they went to when sales figures dropped. Plus every zombie movie ever made brings your loved one back from the beyond, although they are never quite the same. Insta-reanimation doesn't happen as much in science fiction, where you have devices like nanobots and cellular regenerators that should make returning from the state of deadness quite easy. Of course when we do get a scifi resurrection, it's often so lame that you wish the character had stayed dead. Read on for our picks of the best bad returns from the grave. More »
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