Ocean world near Saturn top contender for life beyond Earth

A tiny, ice-encrusted ocean world orbiting Saturn is now a hotter-than-ever candidate for potential life.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has detected hydrogen molecules in the geysers shooting off the moon Enceladus, possibly the result of deep-sea chemical reactions between water and rock that could spark microbial life, scientists announced Thursday.

NASA and others are quick to point out this latest discovery does not mean there's life on Enceladus (ehn-SEHL'-uh-duhs), but that there may be conditions favorable for life.

Tiny tubes in Canadian rock may be oldest known fossils

Tiny tubes and filaments in some Canadian rock appear to be the oldest known fossils, giving new support to some ideas about how life began, a new study says.

The features are mineralized remains of what appear to be bacteria that lived some 3.77 billion to 4.28 billion years ago, the scientists said. That would surpass the 3.7 billion years assigned to some other rock features found in Greenland, which were proposed to be fossils last August.

Scientists: Moon over the hill at 4.51 billion years old

It turns out the moon is older than many scientists suspected: a ripe 4.51 billion years old.

That's the newest estimate, thanks to rocks and soil collected by the Apollo 14 moonwalkers in 1971.

A research team reported Wednesday that the moon formed within 60 million years of the birth of the solar system. Previous estimates ranged within 100 million years, all the way out to 200 million years after the solar system's creation, not quite 4.6 billion years ago.

Baby born with DNA from 3 people, first from new technique

Scientists say the first baby has been born from a controversial new technique that combines DNA from three people — the mother, the father and an egg donor.

The goal was to prevent the child from inheriting a fatal genetic disease from his mother, who had previously lost two children to the illness.

The birth of the boy is revealed in a research summary published by the journal Fertility & Sterility. Scientists are scheduled to present details at a meeting next month in Salt Lake City.

China begins operating world's largest radio telescope

The world's largest radio telescope began searching for signals from stars and galaxies and, perhaps, extraterrestrial life Sunday in a project demonstrating China's rising ambitions in space and its pursuit of international scientific prestige.

Beijing has poured billions into such ambitious scientific projects as well as its military-backed space program, which saw the launch of China's second space station earlier this month.

European, Russian space agencies launch mission to Mars

Europe and Russia launched a joint mission Monday to explore the atmosphere of Mars and hunt for signs of life on the red planet.

The unmanned ExoMars probe— a collaboration between the European Space Agency and Roscosmos — took off from a base in Kazakhstan aboard a Russian rocket.