20 September 2021
Five planetary nurseries have been chemically mapped in the most detail ever, showing hints of unexpected variety and high concentrations of the chemicals required for life
26 August 2021
The surface of Mars is bombarded with far more dangerous radiation than Earth, but the area just inside caves may shield from UV rays while providing just enough light for life
28 June 2021
An analysis of Venus's toxic clouds found that the amount of water there is more than 100 times too low for life as we know it to survive, putting a damper on recent signs that organisms could potentially exist there
9 June 2021
Astronomers have found molecules that could be the building blocks of life in the far reaches of our galaxy, which may broaden the horizons of the search for extraterrestrial life
19 February 2021
Now that NASA’s Perseverance rover has landed safely on Mars, it will start taking samples and release the Ingenuity helicopter to test flying drones on other planets
10 February 2021
Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has drawn criticism for suggesting a weird object passing through the solar system could be an alien spacecraft. But he insists we must keep an open mind when nature throws us a curveball
21 December 2020
The Breakthrough Listen project has found a strange beam of radio waves from Proxima Centauri, which is the team’s best candidate yet for an alien signal
16 December 2020
Clara Sousa-Silva spent most of 2020 sitting on a huge secret – the apparent detection of phosphine, a potential sign of life, on Venus. She tells New Scientist what it felt like and what comes next
20 October 2020
Measurements of phosphine in Venus’s clouds have sparked speculation that it could have come from life, but a new analysis of infrared measurements from 2015 has failed to find the gas
2 October 2020
After the observation of phosphine gas on Venus, which may be a sign of life there, a new search through old data has found hints of the gas and more
