Life on Earth could not exist without carbon. But carbon itself could not exist without stars. Nearly all elements except hydrogen and helium—including carbon, oxygen and iron—only exist because they were forged in stellar furnaces and later flung into the cosmos when their stars died. In an ultimate act of galactic recycling, planets like ours […]

Potentially habitable exoplanets are so incredibly common that astronomers have started to consider more unusual situations where life might arise. Perhaps life can be found on the moon of a hot Jupiter or lingering in the warm ocean of a rogue planet. Recently, there has even been the idea that habitable worlds might orbit white […]