James Webb Space Telescope

Astronomers are ready to search for the fingerprints of life in faraway planetary atmospheres. But first, they need to know where to look — and that means figuring out which planets are likely to have atmospheres in the first place.

The first planet beyond our solar system was identified just 30 years ago. Since then, thousands have been found and characterized. As we look for more, exoplanet experts are also probing for signs of alien biospheres hundreds of light-years away. In this episode, co-host Janna Levin speaks with astrophysicist and astrobiologist Lisa Kaltenegger about how we’ll know we’re not alone in the cosmos.

Physicists discovered strange supersolids, constructed new kinds of superconductors, and continued to make the case that the cosmos is far weirder than anyone suspected.

A long-awaited study of the cosmic expansion rate suggests that when it comes to the Hubble tension, cosmologists are still missing something.

Recent controversies bode ill for the effort to detect life on other planets by analyzing the gases in their atmospheres.

From the smallest scales to the largest, the physical world provided no shortage of surprises this year.

Astronomers thought they had solved the mystery of gamma-ray bursts. A few recent events suggest otherwise.

Scientists have recently discovered scores of free-floating worlds that defy classification. The new observations have forced them to rethink their theories of star and planet formation.

Astronomers are scouring the cosmos for fingerprints of the invisible — tiny clumps of pure dark matter that might solve a long-standing cosmic mystery.