Science News

The discovery of life beyond Earth would shake up our view of humanity's place in the universe, but it probably wouldn't seriously threaten organized religion, experts say.

What conditions are scientists looking for in their search for life on another planet? The presence of water is key, explains Bill Nye, aka The Science Guy.

The simulations were a big undertaking, but the results are in: Without our moon, we would, indeed, suffer larger swings in Earth’s tilt. But here’s the good news: Even over the course of hundreds of millions of years, these swings are not fast and traumatic. Lissauer’s team reckons that the tilt of a moonless Earth would be stable enough, for long enough, to allow complex life to gain a claw-hold, or at least to adapt to new environmental circumstances when the poles moved.

Within the next few years, the number of planets discovered in orbits around distant stars will likely reach several thousand or more. But even as our list of these newly discovered "exoplanets" grows ever-longer, the search for life beyond our solar system will likely focus much more narrowly on the relatively few of these new worlds which exhibit the most Earth-like of conditions.