The discovery of a mysterious interstellar object called "3I/ATLAS" and its transit through our solar system has set off all kinds of speculation about whether the fairly massive visitor could be some ...

For all the talk about life across the cosmos, Earth remains the only confirmed example. That single data point makes your place in the universe feel both ordinary and strange. Two facts sharpen the ...

The Copernican Principle, named in honor of Nicolaus Copernicus (who proposed the heliocentric model of the universe), states that Earth and humans do not occupy a special or privileged place in the ...

A new study argues that conditions necessary for intelligent extraterrestrial life may be far less common than once thought. Planets lacking plate tectonics and sufficient carbon dioxide and oxygen ...

"Although ETIs might be rare, there is only one way to really find out, and that is by searching for it." A new study argues that conditions necessary for intelligent extraterrestrial life may be far ...

We’ve already made our opinion known, but T.Ocellus, a.k.a. “the octopus eye,” especially when it’s inside a poor zombified sheep — is the scariest alien in all of Alien: Earth. The Xenomorph is still ...

In 2016 billionaire Yuri Milner hosted a press conference at One World Observatory, the atrium topping the slick skyscraper at the center of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex. Milner had grown ...

Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. Why Trust Us? Here’s what you will learn when you read this story: Abiogenesis—the emergence of ...

It’s one of the most longstanding questions in biology: how did life first arise? Research on the topic abounds, but there’s no one accepted answer. And according to one new paper, the chances that ...

We’re celebrating 180 years of Scientific American. Explore our legacy of discovery and look ahead to the future. In the late 1800s Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli pointed a telescope at Mars ...