Asteroid sample reveals life’s origin

Of the hundreds of thousands of asteroids in our solar system, it is all too feasible that one could strike Earth. If scientists discover this is likely to happen, what are our options for defending ourselves – and who will make the key decisions? Tomas Weber reports

I found your recent article Are We Aliens? (June, p62) very interesting. I noticed it mentioned that samples from the Mars Sample Return mission would “give us further clues” about the panspermia theo

Isn’t it amazing that astronomy – humanity’s oldest science – continues to generate such a delightful amount of new knowledge? Seeing as we’ve been studying the motion of the stars for a good long whi

What the scientists are saying… The oldest ...

The prospect of life on Mars – Earth’s planetary next-door neighbour, an alien world that betrays tantalising hints of a watery past – has bewitched humanity for centuries. From the ‘canals’ seen by a

‘The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, it seems like an awful waste of space,’ wrote the American astronomer and author Carl Sagan in his book, Contact. Ever since humans first huddled