Life on Earth may exist thanks to an incredible stroke of luck — a chemical sweet spot that most planets miss during their ...

New research from ETH Zurich challenges the long-held “follow the water” rule in the search for extraterrestrial life. Scientists argue that a planet’s habitability depends on a narrow chemical ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Some exoplanets, like the one shown in this illustration, may have atmospheres that could make them potentially suitable for life.

Life on Earth rests on a knife-edge of chemistry that could easily have tipped the other way. As geochemists reconstruct the planet’s birth, they are finding that a narrow band of oxygen conditions ...

In April, astronomers said they had detected a possible signature of life on the exoplanet K2-18b. Now, three independent analyses discount the evidence. An artist’s concept of the exoplanet K2-18b, ...

K2-18b resides within the habitable zone of its star, making the presence of liquid water and thus life possible. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers detected molecules in K2-18b's ...

It was one of humanity’s greater vanities that we ever questioned whether there are any planets in the universe beyond the eight in our little solar system. Our sun is a perfectly ordinary star, ...

In a blow to anyone dreaming that complex life may exist elsewhere in the universe, a new study suggests we're unlikely to find it around many of the most common stars in the galaxy. Earth-like ...

Morgan Underwood receives funding from NASA-funded CLEVER Planets (Cycles of Life-Essential Volatile Elements in Rocky Planets) research project. When astronomers search for planets that could host ...