Tiny life forms tucked into debris from an asteroid hit could catapult to other planets—including Earth—and survive, a new ...

Scientists tested whether microbes can survive the shock of a planetary impact and found some may endure the violent launch into space.

Life needs nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. But without the right balance of oxygen, these elements get locked away in planets’ cores.

This meant subjecting microbes to minimum pressures equivalent to ten times those of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of ...

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 may exist thanks to an incredible stroke of luck — a chemical sweet spot that most planets miss during their formation but ours managed to hit. A new study shows that Earth formed under ...

Scientists might have just found Earth's icy, distant cousin a few hundred million light-years away. HD 137010 b is one of ...

A University of Arizona professor is optimistic about finding life on a newly discovered planet located in the Alpha Centauri system, which is the closest solar system to ours. The planet is believed ...

To support alien life, a planet doesn’t have to be exactly like Earth, but it does need a few key ingredients. First, it ...

At a young age, we're told how the sun warms Earth and makes life possible. That idea sticks with most of us for life. But when we want to understand things more thoroughly and we dig more deeply, we ...

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Morgan Underwood, Rice University (THE CONVERSATION) When astronomers search for ...