Last year, NASA’s Curiosity rover made a fascinating discovery after boring into a suspected ancient lake bed on Mars: long-chain organic molecules, called alkanes, that could serve as a potential ...

A recent study showed that Mars was warm and wet billions of years ago. The finding contrasts with another theory that this era was mainly cold and icy. The result has implications for the idea that ...

Mars has long tempted scientists with hints of chemistry that might once have supported life. Now a NASA-led study argues ...

Organic compounds discovered on the Red Planet cannot be fully explained by non-biological sources, say astrobiologists.

A year ago, NASA announced that its Mars rover Curiosity had discovered long-chain organic compounds. Their quantity suggests ...

Scientists studying a rock sample collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover have uncovered something tantalizing: the largest organic molecules ever detected on Mars. The compounds — decane, undecane, and ...

That does not mean that the detected alkanes are evidence of life on Mars; the conclusion relies on modeling how radiation breaks down organic material over time. However, the finding does suggest ...

A new paper suggests that BARSOOM may have been alive on the planet, and was killed in the Viking experiments.

If we were to ever find alien life, breaking the news to the general public could be much more difficult than one might think ...

In a new study, researchers say that nonbiological sources they considered could not fully account for the abundance of ...

A Martian rock that landed on Earth could hold clues about water on the Red Planet - and the possibility of extraterrestrial ...