Reference Terms
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is life that may exist and originate outside the planet Earth, the only place in the universe currently known by humans to support life. Its existence is currently purely hypothetical as there is yet no evidence of any planets that can support life, or actual extraterrestrial life that has been widely accepted by the scientific community. Most scientists hold that if extraterrestrial life exists, its evolution would have occurred independently in different places in the universe. An alternative hypothesis, held by a minority, is panspermia, which suggests that life in the universe could have stemmed from a smaller number of points of origin, and then spread across the universe, from habitable planet to habitable planet. These two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive.
Related Stories
1
2
Space & Time News
December 5, 2025
Dec. 3, 2025 Earth’s orbit is getting crowded with broken satellites and leftover rocket parts. Researchers say the solution is to build spacecraft that can be repaired, reused, or recycled instead of abandoned. They also want new tools to collect old debris ...
Dec. 2, 2025 A UC Irvine team uncovered a never-before-seen quantum phase formed when electrons and holes pair up and spin in unison, creating a glowing, liquid-like state of matter. By blasting a custom-made material with enormous magnetic fields, the ...
Nov. 23, 2025 A massive solar storm in May 2024 gave scientists an unprecedented look at how Earth’s protective plasma layer collapses under intense space weather. With the Arase satellite in a perfect observing position, researchers watched the plasmasphere ...
Nov. 21, 2025 New observations show that asteroid 1998 KY26 is a mere 11 meters across and spinning twice as fast as previously thought. The discovery adds complexity to Hayabusa2’s 2031 mission but also heightens scientific interest. The asteroid’s ...
Nov. 17, 2025 Scientists built a tiny clock from single-electron jumps to probe the true energy cost of quantum timekeeping. They discovered that reading the clock’s output requires vastly more energy than the clock uses to function. This measurement process ...
Nov. 16, 2025 Researchers combined deep learning with high-resolution physics to create the first Milky Way model that tracks over 100 billion stars individually. Their AI learned how gas behaves after supernovae, removing one of the biggest computational ...
Nov. 16, 2025 Dark matter may be invisible, but scientists are getting closer to understanding whether it follows the same rules as everything we can see. By comparing how galaxies move through cosmic gravity wells to the depth of those wells, researchers found ...
Nov. 13, 2025 Researchers engineered “gyromorphs,” a new type of metamaterial that combines liquid-like randomness with large-scale structural patterns to block light from every direction. This innovation solves longstanding limitations in quasicrystal-based ...
Nov. 13, 2025 Arctic sea ice is disappearing fast, and scientists have turned to an unexpected cosmic clue—space dust—to uncover how ice has changed over tens of thousands of years. By tracking helium-3–bearing dust trapped (or blocked) by ancient ice, ...
Nov. 10, 2025 New research from UBC Okanagan mathematically demonstrates that the universe cannot be simulated. Using Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, scientists found that reality requires “non-algorithmic understanding,” something no computation can ...
Nov. 2, 2025 A team of astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to create the first 3D atmospheric map of an exoplanet. The fiery WASP-18b, a massive “ultra-hot Jupiter,” revealed striking temperature contrasts, including regions so hot they destroy ...
Oct. 30, 2025 Scientists have developed a groundbreaking tool called Effort.jl that lets them simulate the structure of the universe using just a laptop. The team created a system that dramatically speeds up how researchers study cosmic data, turning what once ...
Latest Headlines
updated 12:56 pm ET
Dec. 4, 2025 A network of powerful ground-based telescopes captured rare starspot-crossing events on TOI-3884b, revealing cooler patches on the star’s surface and rapid changes tied to its rotation. By ...
Dec. 4, 2025 FROSTI is a new adaptive optics system that precisely corrects distortions in LIGO’s mirrors caused by extreme laser power. By using custom thermal patterns, it preserves mirror shape without ...
Dec. 3, 2025 A surprisingly mature spiral galaxy named Alaknanda has been spotted just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang—far earlier than astronomers believed such well-structured galaxies could form. With ...
Dec. 3, 2025 For thirty years, SOHO has watched the Sun from a stable perch in space, revealing the inner workings of our star and surviving crises that nearly ended the mission. Its long-term observations ...
Dec. 2, 2025 Some white dwarfs in rapid binary orbits are far hotter and larger than theory predicts. Researchers found that powerful tidal forces between them ...
Nov. 29, 2025 The discovery of strange, ultra-red objects—especially the extreme case known as The Cliff—has pushed astronomers to propose an entirely new type of cosmic structure: black hole stars. These ...
Nov. 29, 2025 Nearly a century after astronomers first proposed dark matter to explain the strange motions of galaxies, scientists may finally be catching a glimpse of it. A University of Tokyo researcher ...
Nov. 26, 2025 Michigan State University astrophysicists are closing in on one of space science’s biggest mysteries: where the galaxy’s most energetic particles come from. Their studies uncovered a pulsar wind ...
Nov. 26, 2025 Mars’s Coloe Fossae reveals a landscape shaped by ancient ice ages, with deep valleys, cratered terrain, and frozen debris flows preserved from a time when the planet’s climate dramatically ...
Nov. 24, 2025 Moss spores survived an extended stay on the outside of the ISS and remained capable of germinating once back on Earth. Their resilience to vacuum, extreme temperatures, and UV radiation surprised ...