The curious minds at What If reveal a planet scientists found that could host alien life, exploring atmosphere, water, and potential biology.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has discovered the largest organic molecules ever detected on Mars. Found inside a 3.7-billion-year-old rock from a dried-up lakebed, these long-chain carbon molecules raise new ...

Language and radio signals may not matter to aliens. Instead, they might be using patterns to leave a biological fingerprint.

Despite the vast differences in human and bee brains, both of us can do mathematics. As we argue in a new paper published in ...

Astonishingly, we can identify molecules present in the atmospheres of exoplanets.

Trees play a central role in life on Earth. They store CO₂, provide habitats for animals, fungi, and insects, stabilize soils ...

A new book presents the baseball legend’s testimony in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee as a critical ...

Saving the world grand strategy-style.

How large is a large language model? Think about it this way. In the center of San Francisco there’s a hill called Twin Peaks from which you can view nearly the entire city. Picture all of it—every ...

During pregnancy, maternal and fetal cells migrate back and forth across the placenta, with fetal cells entering the mother's bloodstream and tissues. They can settle in maternal organs such as the ...

A recent study suggests that late M-stars, despite their abundance in the galaxy and potential for hosting detectable Earth-like planets, are unlikely to support the emergence of complex animal life.

If a Galactic Internet is out there, we may be like fish swimming through the ocean, unaware of the undersea cables carrying vast streams of information around us. The data may be flowing right past ...