Alex Wilkins

NASA’s Perseverance rover recorded unusual sounds as a Martian dust devil passed directly over the robotic vehicle in 2021, and we now know they came from electrical activity in the storm

There are a couple potential explanations for distinctive markings found on a Martian rock, but new evidence suggests they are most likely to be related to microbial activity

A meteorite discovered in north-west Africa in 2023 didn’t come from a large asteroid or any of the known planets of the solar system – but it might have formed on a planet that was destroyed long ago

Tests show that when people hear recordings of real voices and AI-created ones, they mostly fail to spot the fakes – raising concerns about scams involving counterfeit voices

Quantum effects like superposition and entanglement have long been seen in single particles, but physicists are on a quest to find out just how big an object can be before it loses its quantumness

On a faraway planet, James Webb Space Telescope has picked up signs of molecules that, on Earth, are produced only by living organisms – but researchers say we must interpret the results cautiously

The 2000-year-old Antikythera mechanism may have been a kind of astronomical calculator, but researchers are unsure whether it would have worked without jamming

The report of possible biosignatures on the exoplanet K2-18b is exciting, but we are a long way from establishing beyond doubt that there is life on such a distant world

Powering quantum computers with quantum batteries would reduce the energy needed for cooling and enable machines to pack in more qubits

Unusual signals called quasi periodic eruptions appear to come from black holes, but we don't know what creates them. Now astronomers have seen the most powerful one of these signals ever, and have a new idea about their cause