To support alien life, a planet doesn’t have to be exactly like Earth, but it does need a few key ingredients. First, it should orbit its star at the right distance, where temperatures allow liquid ...

Planets orbiting stars beyond the solar system come in all shapes and sizes but mostly fit into a few categories: large and hot gas giants, super-Earths that are slightly larger than our planet, ...

Investor excitement around the SpaceX IPO is colliding with peak Elon Musk futurism after a new social media post featuring his musings about light-speed travel and exploring alien worlds. In a social ...

But the universe also hosts worlds that break away from this familiar image. Some planets drift alone through space without a central star, while others are so distorted by intense gravity that they ...

While long-fabled technologies like Smell-O-Vision are still a long way off from ever being a reality, astronomers can still technically smell stuff deep in space without actually having to get a ...

The upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory should be able to spot the glint of water on habitable planets, and maybe more ...

A rocky world orbiting within its star’s habitable zone may be surrounded by a helium-rich atmosphere, providing the strongest evidence yet that planets with Earth-like conditions could support life ...

When/if alien life ever cruises toward Earth in big spaceships, we’re probably not just going to see it; we’re going to hear it via narrow radio signals. If an extraterrestrial civilization wanted to ...

Time works differently in space and on other planets, so the decade-plus that Alien Isolation fans have been waiting for the sequel might have felt like a blink of an eye on a different world. On ...