astrobiology

Earth is like an oasis in space. But this is by no means a given. It took a series of unlikely coincidences for life to originate on Earth.

A mysterious light-absorbing substance on Titan and Pluto could reveal hidden chemical processes and prebiotic pathways in the outer solar system.

Billions of years ago, Mars looked very different from the cold, dry world we see today. Scientists believe the Red Planet once had a warmer climate, liquid water and a thicker atmosphere. These conditions may have been suitable for simple forms of life. But did life ever actually exist on Mars? That remains one of […] The post Scientists find a new way to search for ancient life on Mars using ‘m…

Nature Astronomy, Published online: 19 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41550-026-02877-8 The returned samples from asteroids Bennu and Ryugu document a remarkably rich organic inventory, spanning from smaller molecules to complex macromolecular materials. This chemical diversity renews the discussion of how prebiotic complexity on small bodies may relate to the processes leading to the emergence of life.

Something is absorbing light on the surfaces of Pluto and Saturn’s moon Titan, and figuring out what it is could be crucial to understanding Titan’s complex chemistry

Current plans for flagship telescopes in the 2040s are focused on answering a simple question - are we alone? Our best telescopes to date, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have only given us tantalizing glimpses into the atmospheres or other worlds, but not enough to truly determine whether or not life as we know it exists there. Astronomers have been waiting for technology to catch …

The Murchison meteorite has been sitting in collections since 1969, when it broke apart over the Australian state of Victoria and scattered in pieces across paddocks and roadsides. Researchers have picked at it for decades. It is one of the most studied rocks not from this planet, stuffed with organic molecules, and a standing puzzle: which of those molecules came from space, and which it picked …

The deep ocean is amongst the most inhospitable environments on Earth. Microbial inhabitants of this niche frequently possess evolutionary adaptations that facilitate their survival under extremes of pressure, temperature, pH and nutrient deprivation. These characteristic features have historically positioned marine extremophiles as intriguing targets for study as proxies for extraterrestrial lif…

Nature Astronomy, Published online: 17 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41550-026-02893-8 Detecting life on ocean worlds necessitates distinguishing biotic from abiotic signals. An Enceladus case study shows that rigorously characterizing the abiotic baseline is essential for evaluating biosignature suitability.

For today's bite guest author, Savaria Parrish, explores the prospects for habitability on planets around a class of stellar remnants known as white dwarfs!

Earth may have gotten some of the key ingredients for life from asteroids in the inner solar system, but not without assistance from Jupiter.

_The Anthropocene Review_. 2026This paper aims to explore an astrobiological genealogy of the concept of the Planetary vividly discussed in contemporary environmental humanities and social sciences, and to offer a framework for an articulation of political-economic models based on this concept. Following Bentley Allan, we propose to treat the Planetary as an example of scientific cosmology, thus …

New calculations suggest Earth bacteria could have reached Jupiter’s icy ocean moon.

Viking 1 kicked off the search for Martian life 50 years ago. Now NASA’s shifting priorities are putting the quest in limbo.

Until last fall Amber Young was a NASA astrobiologist seeking signs of life on the more than 6,000 planets discovered beyond our solar system. She is fascinated by exoplanetary atmospheres and the signatures in them that offer clues that organisms might exist somewhere on those worlds. “Life changes the atmosphere,” she says. Now in her new role as a NASA project scientist, she calls shifts in at…

Our search for technosignatures - clear signs of advanced civilizations beyond Earth - takes many forms. Many are driven by the famous Drake equation, which attempts to estimate how many technological civilizations there are in the Milky Way. However, there’s a big fat question mark at the end of that equation in the form of a variable intended to account for the “longevity” of a civilization. An…

On June 14, 1949, a rhesus monkey named Albert II was launched into space aboard a V-2 rocket from White Sands, New Mexico. Prior to Albert II, animals including fruit flies, mice, and another monkey (Albert I) had been launched in rocket and balloon flights as part of American space biology research, but Albert II’s Continue reading "June 14, 1949: The first mammal in space" The post June 14, 19…

NASA-supported scientists have provided new information about how the early Earth may have acquired some elements necessary for the planet to become habitable. They also suggest a new role for Jupiter in the distribution of these elements throughout the young solar system. The study, published in Science Advances, examines this history by looking at the ratio of phosphorus to nitrogen in iron met…

Earth was bombarded by impactors in its first couple billion years. These impacts created a vast network of hydrothermal systems in the crust that could've spawned life. New research examines their extent.

Sulfur is one of the most abundant elements in the universe. If you peer into a diffuse interstellar cloud, you find loads of it - about the amount expected based on fusion patterns of the stars it was born in. However, if you look at a dense, cold, molecular cloud - the kind where those stars actually form - it seems like 99% of the sulfur that is expected to be there is missing. Scientists have…