
How a radical redefinition of life could help us find aliens
19 June 2023
Sara Imari Walker, who developed Assembly Theory with chemist Lee Cronin, explains how the theory's definition of life might help us find it on other planets

19 June 2023
Sara Imari Walker, who developed Assembly Theory with chemist Lee Cronin, explains how the theory's definition of life might help us find it on other planets

24 October 2022
Astronomers think that planets covered in water, with oceans hundreds of metres deep, could be relatively common in our galaxy. Now the race is on to find one

5 May 2021
Looking for signs of life in exoplanet atmospheres is fraught with uncertainty. But now that we can detect polarised light reflected directly off other worlds, we could spot unmistakable evidence of photosynthesis

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

27 January 2021
Intelligent extraterrestrials may have built vast solar power plants around their host stars. The hunt for their telltale glow is hotting up

30 September 2020
Hints of bacteria on Venus are encouraging, but finding life beyond Earth is the easy part. A new analysis suggests the evolution of human-like intelligence on another planet is more improbable than we like to imagine

26 August 2020
From rogue worlds that roam the cosmos alone to Tatooines that orbit two suns, astronomers are expanding our definition of habitable exoplanets

11 December 2019
Our conceptions of alien life are based on a sample of one: Earth’s life. That means even our wildest imaginings are likely to be completely off beam

13 November 2019
Microbes that breathe sulphur could redefine what it means to be alive and provide clues about what organisms may lurk in the cosmos

28 August 2019
Next-generation telescopes and new ways of detecting life on other planets are transforming the search for extraterrestrials. We may finally be about to find out if aliens exist