Why in the world is the Vatican searching for extraterrestrial life? Does the Catholic hierarchy know something about alien life that the rest of us do not? Why is the largest religious organization on the planet spending so much time and energy looking for “brother extraterrestrial”? Earlier this month, the Vatican Observatory cosponsored a major conference on extraterrestrial life that brought... 

Astronomers have found a record number of super-Earths orbiting in the habitable zone of a known star, 22 light years away from Earth. The planets, which have three suns, have one side illuminated at all times while the other is submerged in darkness. The Gliese 667C star in the constellation of Scorpion has been well studied before. However, as a result of new observations the scientists made a stunning... 

The 1998 QE2 asteroid has the physical mass to potentially deliver life on Earth a knockout punch, being 2.7km in length. It is to buzz our planet on May 31, aweing the stargazing community. Officially known as Asteroid 1998 QE2, the ‘minor planet’, as astronomers refer to these space objects, is about nine times the length of its name-sharing ocean liner, Queen Elizabeth 2. The incoming space... 

Doomsday paranoia triggers private asteroid hunt The Mayan doomsday may have passed without incident, but it’s too early to relax. Astronomers have found a large asteroid heading this way. However one private firm thinks it knows how to save us. ­Scientists from the University of Hawaii said that the 140 meter asteroid’s will just miss Earth as the orbital trajectory of the 2011 AG5 space... 

Astronomers have identified a giant gas planet, located just under 5,000 light-years away, that its sky is illuminated by four different stars (suns). According to the report published in Astrophysical Journal, the planet named PH1, after the Planet Hunters site, is slightly larger than Neptune and about six times the size of Earth. Two US volunteers, Kian Jek of San Francisco and Robert Gagliano... 

Illustration shows cross-section view of 55 Cancri e A team of American-Franco researchers led by Yale University have discovered a nearby planet, twice as big as Earth, with a mantle that could be composed largely of diamonds. The planet, known as 55 Cancri e, is located just 40 light years away in the constellation of Cancer and is likely covered in diamond and graphite rather than water and granite,... 

NASA scientists plan to launch a telescope into space in an attempt to find the mysterious killer planet Nibiru. Supposedly, the planet may considerably change life on Earth in near future, reports NTV. According to a number of experts on the esoteric, the planet will bring all sorts of horrors to Earth, strictly on the scenarios of end-of-the-world films. The list of disasters includes: earthquakes,... 

The handout illustration provided by NASA shows Phoenix, the newly-found galaxy. Astronomers have recently discovered a distant gigantic galaxy cluster that is capable of giving birth to new stars at an extraordinary rate. Observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the US National Science Foundation’s South Pole Telescope and eight other observatories, showed that the newly-discovered... 

Astronomers have found a rectangular galaxy that bucks the typical spheroidal, disc-like, or lumpy shapes. Astronomers have found a rectangular galaxy in a wide field-of-view image taken with the Japanese Subaru Telescope for Swinburne astrophysicist Dr. Lee Spitler. The unusual cosmic phenomenon was discovered 70 million light years away within a group of 250 galaxies. “In the Universe around us,... 

False color image of the galaxy LAEJ095950.99+021219.1. Astronomers at Arizona State University have located a remote and faint galaxy, which is one of the ten most distant known objects in the space. The team used the IMACS instrument on the Magellan Telescopes in Chile and identified the galaxy ‘LAEJ095950.99+021219.1’ that is about 13 billion light-years away from the Earth. “This galaxy... 

Astronomers analyzed the data and then combined them into an atlas of more than 18,000 images and a catalog of the properties of more than 560 million individual objects. NASA has released a new atlas and catalog of the entire infrared sky with more than a half billion stars and galaxies many of which have never been seen before. Scientists used the images taken by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer... 

No danger: U.S astronomer Phil Plait has said we have nothing to fear from 2012 DA14... for now A 150-foot asteroid orbiting Earth called 2012 DA14 will pass so close to Earth it will fly UNDER man-made satellites orbiting our planet. Nasa’s Impact Risk report said that the odds of the space rock actually hitting our planet are very low indeed – but on February 15 next year it will pass... 

This all-sky image shows the distribution of carbon monoxide (CO), a molecule used by astronomers to trace molecular clouds across the sky, as seen by Planck. New images captured by the European Space Agency (ESA) Planck mission space telescope have revealed a mysterious haze of microwave emissions in the Milky Way Galaxy. “The images reveal two exciting aspects of the galaxy in which we live.... 

An artist's impression of Kepler-34b orbiting a double-star system Astronomers have discovered two new circumbinary planet systems showing that planets with two suns are common, with probably many millions existing in our Galaxy. According to the article published in the journal Nature, the two new Saturn-sized planets, Kepler-34b and Kepler-35b, and their systems are located in the constellation... 

An international team of astronomers has discovered the world’s youngest gas giant planet, which is five times younger than the previous record holder. The newly discovered planet named LkCa 15 b after its star, has been started to take shape about 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, Discovery News reported. Dr. Adam Kraus of the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy spotted the planet...