Tantalising traces of the building blocks of life have been spotted in nearby galaxies. However, working out the identity of these carbon-containing molecules, and when they became abundant, is proving tricky, say astronomers.
Researchers have released a list of the top five potential habstars in our galaxy, three of which can be seen from Earth with the naked eye.
An interview with Dr. Michio Kaku on the physics of extra-terrestrial civilizations, and whether we can classify their evolution judging from our own work in progress.
The building blocks of life pervade the solar system, and probably the universe, locked up in planetary polar ice caps, crouching in the interstices of ancient volcanic rocks, zooming around on comets and meteorites, drifting between galaxies in interstellar space, or wafting gently down in cosmic dust.
One tenth of the stars in our galaxy might provide the right conditions to support complex life, according to a new analysis by Australian researchers. And most of these stars are on average one billion years older than the Sun, allowing much more time, in theory, for any life to evolve.
Scientists searching the stars for aliens are convinced an E.T. is out there -- it's just that they haven't had the know-how to detect such a being. But now technological advances have opened the way for scientists to check millions of previously unknown star systems, dramatically increasing the chances of finding intelligent life in outer space in the next 25 years, the world's largest private extraterrestrial agency believes.
A recent NASA sponsored conference on extraterrestrial life highlights the increasing amount of attention and funding the agency is paying to the search for extraterrestrial life.
The latest attempt to work out how much alien life is out there suggests there may be a lot more than most people thought. According to a new statistical analysis based on how quickly life got going on Earth, life will start on at least a third of Earth-like planets within a billion years of them developing suitable conditions. And with recent discoveries that planets are common around Sun-like stars, there's probably no shortage of prospective homes.
New Mexico State University physicist Slava Solomatov argues that "the more scientists learn about the conditions that make life possible on Earth, the more they realize how complex those factors are -- and how a relatively small change in one condition or another could have rendered the planet uninhabitable."
Looking for life elsewhere is a tough task for human or robot. The good news is that the scientific skill and tools to search for, detect and inspect extraterrestrial life are advancing rapidly.