Extraterrestrial Life

Could tiny swimming microbes help us unlock the mysteries of extraterrestrial life?

Elon Musk’s Fork in the Road isn’t just a sculpture—it’s a monument to the tech world’s obsession with civilizational survival, which has its roots in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence

A newly confirmed exoplanet around a nearby sunlike star might be astronomers’ best chance yet to look for life beyond the solar system—but it’s still no place like home

Material retrieved from the asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft shows that all the basic building blocks of life were astonishingly widespread in the early solar system

NASA sees two paths for saving its beleaguered plan to retrieve materials from the Red Planet but won’t choose between them until 2026

We need less uproar over everyday drones and more critical attention about ones near airports and other restricted airspace

Material from asteroid Ryugu riddled with earthly microbes provides a cautionary tale for scientists seeking signs of alien life

Odds are that we’re not truly alone in the cosmos. But practically speaking, we might as well be

In 1974 we beamed a radio transmission into space that changed the way we think about our place in the cosmos

On the 50th anniversary of the “Arecibo message,” we present a reflection on humankind’s first attempt to send a transmission to intelligent life in the cosmos.

For the first time, we are sending a spacecraft to explore an alien ocean world—a moon that might host life today

An office in the Pentagon investigated UFOs—and the paranormal—over a decade ago, segueing into a long saga leading to Congressional hearings and breathless news stories today. But the real story looks more like former defense officials pushing their personal mythology, rather than any cover-up of aliens