14 December 2022
From serious efforts to declare our presence to extraterrestrial civilisations to daft publicity stunts, we have been sending messages to space for decades. What should a new postcard to the stars say?
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
1 December 2021
When we started finding planetary systems around other stars we thought many of them would be like ours. We’ve now found hundreds – and it’s so far, so wrong
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
19 June 2019
Earth's nearest neighbours have turned into uninhabitable hellholes. Understanding their transformation will teach us which rocky exoplanets might be fit for life
10 April 2019
Proxima Centauri is 4 light years away. Ambitious space mission Breakthrough Starshot is developing a way to push spacecraft there at a fifth of the speed of light
7 November 2018
We have seen violent winds, clouds of glass and ruby hailstones. In fact, weather on exoplanets can be so extreme that it can make or break their habitability
19 September 2018
Puffball planets the density of polystyrene are just some of the oddities we’ve spied in other solar systems – is our own backyard the exception, not the rule?
5 September 2018
Our hunt for life on other planets is based on what it looks like today, but early Earth used to be so different. What if we are missing some vital clues?
25 July 2018
A fleeting glimpse of the ice giants 30 years ago hinted at very weird science that could tell us a lot about exoplanets. Now we have a rare chance to go back
