Astronomy, Search For Life | featured news

A British astrobiology conference has revived a years-old debate over the best place to look for life elsewhere in the solar system: Mars, or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn? "For reasons I don't really understand, the wider solar system and the potential for life there has not been high priority," The Telegraph quoted Robert Pappalardo, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as saying on BBC Radio 4.

Astronomers have developed a new method to probe the atmospheres of extrasolar planets, which should greatly expand the search for planets that have the right temperature and composition for life. The technique allowed researchers to precisely calculate the mass of a planet named Tau Bootis b for the first time since its discovery 15 years ago.