Q&a with an astrobiologist

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

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

Mars is a pretty horrible place for any creature used to life on Earth. The average surface temperature is -63°C (-81°F) and doesn’t reach above freezing anywhere except right on the equator, during t

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

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