What would you do if you woke up on a spaceship light-years from Earth without knowing why you’re there? Project Hail Mary opens in theaters March 20. Ahead of the film’s release, Astronomy spoke with ...

Like Astrophage, the solar-radiation-eating microbes in Andy Weir’s novel Project Hail Mary, some sea slugs can derive energy from sunlight. Niamh Ordner Like Astrophage, the solar-radiation-eating ...

Like the lead character of “Project Hail Mary,” some scientists are proposing ways that life might exist beyond a star’s “habitable zone,” often considered the gold standard of potential livability An ...

A few thoughts on one of Project Hail Mary’s quieter themes: the interplay between art, communication and science. NB: The ...

With the launch of Space Warps, a new citizen science project on the Zooniverse platform, you can now join in the search to find rare and elusive strong gravitational lenses in never-before-seen ...

Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman. [CLIP: The spaceship Hail Mary’s operating system (played by Priya Kansara) speaks in ...

Scientists are listening in on sperm whale conversations and studying Earth's strangest microbes to prepare humanity for first contact with extraterrestrial life.

Over the past decade, scientists have come up with a variety of frameworks to guide their search for life in the universe. While it’s most convenient to start looking for life using the knowledge that ...

Asteroid impacts may have helped kick-start life on Earth by creating hot, chemical-rich environments ideal for early biology. These impact-generated hydrothermal systems could have lasted thousands ...

Andy Weir, perhaps best-known for his now-classic science fiction book-turned-movie The Martian, has produced another fantastical and deeply science-based book in Project Hail Mary. This book, which ...

Each year, the world's leading climate scientists evaluate the most critical evidence on how our planet is changing. Their assessments draw heavily on data from Earth-observing satellites—and the ...

The world of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AM fungi) runs deep. They live symbiotically with around 70 percent of Earth’s ...