In an effort to determine if conditions were ever right on Mars to sustain life, a team of scientists, including a Michigan State University professor, has examined a meteorite that formed on the red planet more than a billion years ago.
University of Maryland School of Medicine researchers say they've established certain key features in proteins that are needed for life to function on Mars and other extreme environments.
Astronomers have found the strongest evidence yet that the ocean on Jupiter's moon Europa may consist of salty water, like our own. And, they say, that salty water appears to be making its way to the surface.
Life may well exist on planets orbiting dying stars - and, if it does, there's a good chance we'll find it within the next decade, say astrophysicists.
An American research team has successfully drilled through 2,600 feet of Antarctic ice to reach a subglacial lake and collect water and sediment samples that have been isolated for thousands of years.
It's always been a bit of a mystery as to how life began on a molecular level. Theories tend to involve a network of molecules that have the ability to work together to jumpstart and speed up their own replication.
Scientists say they've found the best evidence yet for panspermia - the theory that life on Earth developed from microorganisms brought here from other planets on asteroids, meteors and the like.
New research indicates that life might be able to survive on some of the odder exoplanets discovered so far - from scorching hot worlds with molten surfaces to freezing balls of ice.
One of the most encouraging signs for those searching for evidence of early water on Mars has been the existence of clays. But a French-US team has now rained on that particular parade.
A Japanese deep sea drilling vessel, Chikyu, yesterday set a new world record, by drilling down over 2,111 meters below the seafloor to collect rock samples.
If there's any evidence of ancient life on Mars, it's likely to be found near the surface, new research suggests - dramatically upping the chances that it'll be discovered by the Curiosity rover, set to land next month.
An experiment carried out on the Internatonal Space Station has shown that lichen can survive in outer space - lending support to the 'panspermia' theory that life arrived here from elsewhere.
There's vastly more water in Mars's mantle than previously thought - as much as on Earth, in fact - dramatically raising the chances that the planet might once have sustained life.
Scientists have discovered new types of organism living in one of the most inhospitable soils in the world - raising hopes that something similar could survive on Mars.
