Beyond that, in the decades to come, we might be able to see the colours of an exoplanet’s surface, and determine if plant life might be present there. And then we can search for changes in a planet’s ...

Alien life could exist on hot, rocky planets, sustained not by water but by a type of salty fluid, new research suggests. Reading time 3 minutes The search for alien life usually hinges on finding the ...

Are aliens real? The question has animated conspiracy theories for decades and enthralled at least one former president of the United States. In a recent interview, Barack Obama became the first ...

President Donald Trump said Thursday he will direct multiple U.S. government agencies to declassify files related to aliens and UFOs. The move came five days after former Presiden ...

To support alien life, a planet doesn’t have to be exactly like Earth, but it does need a few key ingredients. First, it should orbit its star at the right distance, where temperatures allow liquid ...

High-energy particles zipping through the cosmos are harmful to life on Earth, but scientists think it could be food for potential alien life elsewhere. Saturn's moon Enceladus (shown here in a 2006 ...

Florida Tech astrophysicist Howard Chen is offering new insights to help aid NASA's search for life beyond Earth. His latest theoretical work investigates the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, one of the ...

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) focuses on finding technosignatures—potential signs of alien technology. If we look carefully, we might have a chance at detecting their ...

There might be many more planets that could be home to aliens than we thought, according to a new study. For years, scientists have searched for life in the “habitable” or “goldilocks” zone – where it ...

We’re celebrating 180 years of Scientific American. Explore our legacy of discovery and look ahead to the future. In the late 1800s Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli pointed a telescope at Mars ...

Documents might help scientists shed light on unexplained phenomena and government secrets, experts said.