
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

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
15 February 2021
Avi Loeb suggests ‘Oumuamua could be an alien spacecraft and that the search for extraterrestrial life is just good science.

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

5 August 2020
We thought we understood life’s minimal energy requirements – but microbes beneath the sea floor survive on hundreds of times less energy than we considered possible

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

17 December 2018
Could there be life on other planets, and if so, what would it look like? Astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell is hunting for alien life in whatever form it takes. Join him as he explores how life developed on our planet, and where life might exist beyond Earth

18 September 2018
Two modified versions of DNA add different “letters” to life’s genetic code but still work just as well as the original