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The study of planets found outside our solar system has been booming over the past few decades, with over two-thousand of these fascinating exoplanets having been cataloged. One of the next obvious steps for researchers is to attempt to detect signs of life on them, although the technology to directly determine if anything is living that far away has yet to be developed. In the meantime, studies are underway to help determine the best candidates to focus on, using what we know about life on Earth, and what information we can currently gather from the exoplanets themselves.
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Mars has been hitting the headlines lately as scientists reveal more and more about the Red Planet’s past. But could this latest piece of evidence really be it? Have scientists really found solid proof of life on Mars?

Strange methane emissions have been detected by NASA researchers in data collected by one of the rover Curiosity’s instruments, and scientists believe that they are being caused by life forms, most likely bacteria. On Earth, life forms are the primary producers of methane, although there could be other possible explanations.
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After an amazing ten year journey, the Rosetta mission landed its module Philae on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko at 16:03 GMT on Wednesday.

Rosetta was launched on 2 March 2004 on an Ariane 5 rocket, and has already made history by becoming the first spacecraft to orbit a comet after it reached its long-awaited destination on August 6th 2014.
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In 1930, Albert Einstein was asked for his opinion about the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. “Other beings, perhaps, but not men,” he answered. Then he was asked whether science and religion conflict. “Not really, though it depends, of course, on your religious views.”

Over the past 10 years, astronomers’ new ability to detect planets orbiting other stars has taken this question out of the realm of philosophy, as it was for Einstein, and transformed it into something that scientists might soon be able to answer.
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