The flourishing of lifeforms, such as "extremophiles", creatures that apparently thrive on radiation and acid, in places on Earth generally deemed "inhospitable" are giving encouragement to scientists hopeful of finding life elsewhere in the universe. There's hardly a niche on Earth that hasn't been colonised. Life can be found in scalding, acidic hot pools, in the driest deserts, and in the dark, crushing depths of the ocean. It has ... Read full entry

The era of the flying saucer (and I dare say, little green men from outer space) began just over 61 years ago when US pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing saucers skimming across water near Mt. Rainier, in the US state of Washington. The modern phenomena of UFOs and "flying saucers" began in Washington state on June 24, 1947, when Kenneth Arnold spotted nine mysterious, high-speed objects "flying like a ... Read full entry

I guess an ad for tortilla chips is better than ads for Big Brother or Sex in the City, and who knows, the denizens of the Ursa Major star system, where the ad was targeted, may send a scout ship our way to sample these tortilla chip things. It could be the longest commercial break in history. Over a six-hour period this morning, high-powered radars in the Arctic Circle ... Read full entry

Sun's properties not "fine-tuned" for life It turns out the type of star our Sun is, a G star by the way, doesn't make it anymore conducive to hosting life bearing planets than any other star type. There's nothing special about the Sun that makes it more likely than other stars to host life, a new study shows. The finding adds weight to the idea that alien life should ... Read full entry

Vatican: It's OK to believe in aliens Pope Benedict XVI is proving to be a rather accommodating pope, and has said through Jose Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, that "belief" in the existence of extraterrestrial life will not see you thrown into the fires of hell. "How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Funes said. "Just as we consider earthly creatures as ‘a brother,’ and ... Read full entry

Stuff of Life (but Not Life Itself) Is Detected on a Distant Planet Methane, an ingredient of the building blocks of life, has been found in the atmosphere of a planet called HD 189733b, which is 63 lights years distant from Earth. Astronomers reported Wednesday that they had made the first detection of an organic molecule, methane, in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system and ... Read full entry