Features

Searching for life... but not as we know it

Are we alone in the universe?

10 October 2018

Before the 1990s, much of the search for habitable planets and extraterrestrial life was restricted to our solar system. It’s a region that astrogeophysicist Christopher McKay describes as the ‘Goldilocks zone’, where it’s not too hot or too cold, but just right for biology.

This is no longer the case. Advancements in the tools and technologies that scientists use to explore the universe have seen astronomers discovering thousands of planets orbiting distant stars – called exoplanets – opening up possibilities that there may just be other forms of life out there.

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