Life and Universe

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler telescope is broken, potentially jeopardizing the search for other worlds where life could exist outside our solar system.

The first Canadian astronaut to command the International Space Station landed safely in Kazakhstan with two crewmates on Tuesday, wrapping up a five-month mission aboard the International Space Station.

Noncoding DNA, which has puzzled scientists for so many years, and is abundant in many living things, may not actually be needed for creation of complex life, according to researchers.

Researchers from Brown and Case Western Reserve universities and Carnegie Institution of Washington have found that the water found on the moon, like that on Earth, came from small meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites in the first 100 million years or so after the solar system formed.

The team operating NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Mars has selected a second target rock for drilling and sampling, it has been revealed. The rover will set course to the drilling location in coming days.

Scientists have studied two dead stars, which they say are giving us a glimpse as to how our Solar System might look like a few billion years from now.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has found signs of Earth-like planets in the atmospheres of a pair of burnt-out stars in a nearby star cluster. The white dwarf stars are being polluted by debris from asteroid-like objects falling onto them.

Scientists, academics and medics gathered this week in a London hotel to discuss a topic that has been virtually unmentionable in academic circles for decades - did humans descend from aquatic apes that spent more time swimming than dragging their knuckles on  the ground?

Researchers believe ancient plankton DNA might be widely preserved in Black Sea lake sediments and can likely be used to reconstruct past life in the majority of oceanic and lake environments.

NASA's Curiosity rover is back in business after a communication gap that lasted for a couple of weeks caused by solar interference.