Mining asteroids is a well-oiled trope of science-fiction. But someday, actually doing it will make economic sense. Many of the essential metals of... →
Seth Shostak
The bottom line is, like, one in five stars has at least one planet where life might spring up. That's a fantastically large percentage. That... →
The overwhelming bulk of the cosmos is deathly quiet. But here and there - on worlds where matter is thick and conditions are right - noises are... →
The cosmos is three times as old as Earth. During most of creation's 14 billion year history, our solar system wasn't around. Nonetheless... →
The math is dead simple: it seems that the frequency of planets able to support life is roughly one percent. In other words, a billion or more such... →
We haven't yet found a speck of evidence for biology on another world, so we have no objective way to judge whether life is a onetime fluke or a... →
If this is the only planet on which not only life, but intelligent life, has arisen, that would be very unusual.
Mars still remains the astrobiology community's number one choice for 'nearest rock with life,' but there are many researchers who argue... →
Planets that don't currently sport plate tectonics, such as Venus and Mars, are scarcely habitable. Tectonics might be a requirement of any world... →
The Earth has been lawned with life for something over 3.5 billion years. That's a span of time great enough to encompass some honest-to-goodness... →