Photo: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Researchers have sequenced the genome of an archaic Siberian girl 31 times over, using a new method that amplifies single strands of DNA. As the team reports online in Science this week, more than 99% of the nucleotides are sequenced at least 10 times, so researchers have as sharp a picture of this ancient genome as of a living person's. That precision allows the team to compare the nuclear genome of this girl, who lived in Siberia's Denisova Cave more than 50,000 years ago, directly to the genomes of living people, producing a "near-complete" catalog of the small number of genetic changes that make us different from the Denisovans, who were close relatives of Neandertals.

Wikipedia: Altai Mountains

Thomas H. Douglass: The Denisova discovery - An international team of scientists made headlines at the end of last year when they used genetic evidence to show that an ancient people, once living in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia, were distant cousins of the Neanderthals and contributed to the modern human genome before their extinction. The discovery is a triumph of modern genomics and decades of publicly funded science research in the United States and elsewhere, which has led to the sequencing of the human genome and promises to revolutionize our understanding of evolution, disease, and global genetic diversity.

The Mars rover Curiosity is indulging in a flurry of multimedia activity ahead of its science mission proper. It sent the first image from its 100mm telephoto lens, already spotting an intriguing geological "unconformity". Nasa also released a colour panorama of Mount Sharp, the rover's ultimate goal. On Monday, the rover relayed "the first voice recording to be sent from another planet", and on Tuesday it will broadcast a song from artist will.i.am as part of an educational event.

But alongside these show pieces, Curiosity - also known as the Mars Science Laboratory - is already warming up its instruments for a science mission of unprecedented scope on the Red Planet. Nasa said that the rover was already is returning more data from Mars than all of the agency's earlier rovers combined. It will eventually trundle to the base of Mount Sharp, the 5km-high peak at the centre of Gale Crater, in which the rover touched down just over three weeks ago. For now it is examining the "scour marks" left by the rocket-powered crane that lowered the rover onto the planet's surface, giving some insight into what lies just below it.

The rover will now employ its Dan instrument, which fires the subatomic particles neutrons at the surface to examine levels of hydrogen- and hydroxyl-containing minerals that could hint at Mars' prior water-rich history. Another tool in its arsenal, the ChemCam, which uses a laser to vapourise rock and then chemically examine the vapour, will also have a look at the scour marks. And the Sample Analysis at Mars or Sam instrument, itself a package of three analysis tools, has now been switched on and is being run through its paces ahead of "sniffing" the Martian atmosphere; the tests include analysing a sample of Earth air that was left in it at launch.

NASA's Curiosity rover has successfully landed on Mars! The first pictures are expected shortly. (Guardian liveblog) - At 06.14 BST Nasa's Curiosity rover touched down safely in Gale Crater on Mars following a complex landing sequence, leading to scenes of jubilation at mission control. Follow the landing, as it happened, here.

Reuters: NASA rover Curiosity makes historic Mars landing, beams back photos

Washington Post: ‘Touchdown confirmed’: NASA rover Curiosity lands on Mars, beams back photo of own shadow - The robotic explorer Curiosity’s daring plunge through the pink skies of Mars was more than perfect. It landed with spectacular style, said a NASA scientist, describing the first images of its mechanical gymnastics. Hours after NASA learned the rover had arrived on target, engineers and scientists got the first glimpses of the intricate maneuvers it made to hit the Martian soil safely. The extraterrestrial feat injected a much-needed boost to NASA, which is debating whether it can afford another robotic Mars landing this decade. At a budget-busting $2.5 billion, Curiosity is the priciest gamble yet, which scientists hope will pay off with a bonanza of discoveries and pave the way for astronaut landings.

A debunking of the global warming agenda, from Roy W. Spencer, former NASA climatologist and climate expert. For more on this topic, purchase his new Broadside, "The Bad Science and Bad Policy of Obama's Global Warming Agenda" by clicking here: http://amzn.to/jYWzEH.

After a gap of almost a decade, India bagged a gold medal at the prestigious International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) held at Amsterdam, Netherlands. - The six-member team of Indian students, who participated in the week-long 52nd IMO since July 16, bagged one gold, one silver and two bronze medals, Director of Dr Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE) Dr Jayashree Ramadas said in a release today. Akashnil Dutta from Kolkata bagged the gold medal, Akashdeep Dey from Nadia won silver, while Debdyuti Banerjee from Hoogly and Mrudul Thatte from Pune won Bronze medals. Another two students from Pune Indraneel Kasmalkar and Prafulla Dhariwal had Honorable Mention (equal to participation certificate), Ramadas said. Last year, the six-member team bagged two silver and one bronze medals, while three students had got Honourable Mention, she said. A total of 564 students from 102 countries participated in the world event for the young meritorious students in Mathematics, she said.

Isibang: Problems [.pdf]
Isibang: Results of IMO 2012 [.pdf]
Global Times: Eastern Indian boy wins gold in global maths event
Forum Geometricorum: Alhazen’ s Circular Billiard Problem [.pdf]

Finds confirms theories on universe's formation

This is shaping up to be one hell of a week for scientists trying to figure out the mysteries of the universe. Hot on the heels of the apparent Higgs boson discovery, an international team of astrophysicists has revealed that it has spotted a filament of dark matter connecting two clusters of galaxies, reports the Los Angeles Times. The mysterious matter is believed to make up most of the matter in the universe, and to give the cosmic web of stars and galaxies its shape, but until now, it had only been detected in clumps, not strands.

The strand—which stretches for 58 million light years between the galaxy clusters Abell 222 and Abell 223—was detected through an analysis of background light from 40,000 galaxies, which found that space and time were being warped by an unseen mass. Other scientists hailed the team for turning the strands from theory to fact. "It's a resounding confirmation of the standard theory of structure formation of the universe," an astronomer at the University Observatory Munich says. "And it's a confirmation people didn't think was possible at this point."

The Higgs Boson particle may have been discovered, according to a video that was leaked from the CERN on Tuesday. British physicist Peter Higgs, seen here visiting CERN's Large Hadron Collider in 2008, was one of six scientists who proposed the Higgs mechanism as a theory of how particles acquired mass. - The Higgs Boson particle may have been discovered, according to a video leaked on Tuesday by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) a day before their findings were scheduled to be announced. The Higgs Boson, also known as the God Particle, would account for all of the unexplained mass in the universe, as Wired succinctly explained. The particle described in the CERN video is possibly the Higgs, or possibly a newfound particle which has a mass that's around 130 times that of a photon, which would make it the most massive particle to ever exist, LiveScience reported. Two teams of scientists — from the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) and CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiments — have been working with the CERN's proton-smashing Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to determine why things in our universe have mass, and by extension, why we exist, National Geographic reported. The main purpose of the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider, which was started up almost four years ago, is to discover the Higgs Boson, according to LiveScience.

Our galaxy is on a collision course with its nearest neighbour, Andromeda, and the head-on crash is expected in four billion years, the US space agency NASA said. Astronomers have long theorised that a clash of these galaxy titans was on the way, though it was unknown how severe it might be, or when. - But years of “extraordinarily precise observations” from NASA’s Hubble Space telescope tracking the motion of the Andromeda galaxy “remove any doubt that it is destined to collide and merge with the Milky Way,” NASA said in a statement. “It will take four billion years before the strike.” After the initial impact it will take another two billion years for them “to completely merge under the tug of gravity and reshape into a single elliptical galaxy similar to the kind commonly seen in the local universe,” NASA added. The stars inside each galaxy are so far apart that they are not likely to collide with each other, but stars will likely be “thrown into different orbits around the new galactic center.” Scientists have long known that Andromeda, also known as M31, is moving toward the Milky Way at a speed of 4,02,000 kilometers per hour, or fast enough to travel from the Earth to the Moon in one hour. But the nature of the crash depended on the galaxy’s sideways motion in the sky, and that trajectory remained a mystery for more than 100 years until the latest analysis of Hubble’s findings were revealed.

Photo: British environmental guru James Lovelock, seen on March 17, 2009 in Paris, admits he was "alarmist" about climate change in the past. (Jacques Demarthon/ AFP/Getty Images)

James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.

Lovelock, 92, is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared. He previously painted some of the direst visions of the effects of climate change. In 2006, in an article in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, he wrote that “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.” However, the professor admitted in a telephone interview with msnbc.com that he now thinks he had been “extrapolating too far." The new book, due to be published next year, will be the third in a trilogy, following his earlier works, “Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back – and How We Can Still Save Humanity,” and “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning: Enjoy It While You Can.” The new book will discuss how humanity can change the way it acts in order to help regulate the Earth’s natural systems, performing a role similar to the harmonious one played by plants when they absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.

Wounds sustained by a juvenile woolly mammoth suggest the beast was sieged by hunting lions AND ancient human beings, scientists say. The discovery of the well-preserved mammal, know as Yuka, could reveal evidence of a run-in with prehistoric humans, as well as the typical predators she would have faced on a daily basis. The carcass of Yuka, who was found by Siberian tusk hunters, is in extremely good condition and much of her pink flesh and strawberry blonde hair remains.

Daniel Fisher, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Michigan, told Discovery News: "This is the first relatively complete mammoth carcass - that is, a body with soft tissues preserved - to show evidence of human association." Speaking to the BBC, he added: “Already there is dramatic evidence of a life-and-death struggle between Yuka and some top predator, probably a lion.”The remains are currently being carbon dated, but so far it is estimated Yuka lived more than 10,000 years ago. It is believed she was two-and-a-half years old when she was killed. (Photo: Valery Plotnikov)

Discovery News: Young Mammoth Likely Butchered by Humans
BBC: Woolly mammoth carcass may have been cut into by humans - Video

The term “holocaust denial” is defined as follows by the American Anti-Defamation League:

Holocaust denial is a contemporary form of the classic anti-Semitic doctrine of the evil, manipulative and threatening world Jewish conspiracy. It was this doctrine that was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the Holocaust. What is on the surface a denial of the reality of genocide is, at its core, an appeal to genocidal hatred. (ADL 1996).

In other words, if you are unconvinced of the official view of the Nazi holocaust, you are complicit in it. Note that the party line changes. Thirty years ago, someone who refused to believe that Jews were made into soap, glue and lampshades by the Nazis, was allegedly party to murder. That is no longer the case. But today, if you question cattle trucks, gas chambers, or a number of Jewish fatalities less than about five million, you are still, by the above definition, someone who is trying to replay that genocide. Note that I don’t reject the latest version of the official story; I reject the idea that rejecting it is a crime. But that doesn’t satisfy the thought police; it just makes me an “apologist” rather than a “denier”. The acceptance of the concept “holocaust denier” is the result of a successful assault on the highest principles of Western civilization – sceptical enquiry and presumption of innocence. It was unlikely it would stop there. Legislators, activists and journalists have tried to extend the term “denier” to protect another sacred tablet: the belief that there is irrefutable evidence that human activity is causing the earth’s climate to enter a period of unprecedented, irreversible warming.

The Ben-Gurion University team discovers plants can transmit distress signals to each other through their roots.

The Ben-Gurion University team discovered that plants can transmit distress signals to each other through their roots. An injured plant "communicates" to a healthy one, which in turn relays the signal to neighboring plants, possibly enhancing the other plants' ability to deal with stress in the future, according to the study, recently published in the periodical PLoS (Public Library of Science One).

The researchers, headed by plant biologist Ariel Novoplansky of the Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, exposed five garden pea plants to drought conditions. They found that the stressed plant closes its leaves to prevent water loss. Meanwhile its roots release signals that caused neighboring plants, which were not exposed to drought conditions, to react as if they had been. The study, "Rumor Has It ...: Relay Communication of Stress Cues in Plants," shows the unstressed plants transmitted the information on to other healthy plants. Preliminary results indicate that plants that receive the distress signals will survive better if exposed to drought at a later stage in their life. Novoplansky and his team found that the distress signals are passed on not only from the injured plant to the adjacent healthy one, but also from the healthy one to its neighbors, which transmit it onwards, all through the plants' roots. Previous studies have shown that plants communicate through their leaves or stems, but the Israeli team revealed "underground" communication through roots. Novoplansky believes the signals released by plants are generic and capable of passing from one plant species to another.

An afternoon whirlwind on Mars lofts a twisting column of dust more than half a mile (800 meters) high in an image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

HiRISE captured the image on Feb. 16, 2012, while the orbiter passed over the Amazonis Planitia region of northern Mars. In the area observed, paths of many previous whirlwinds, or dust devils, are visible as streaks on the dusty surface. The active dust devil displays a delicate arc produced by a westerly breeze partway up its height. The dust plume is about 30 yards or meters in diameter. The image was taken during the time of Martian year when that planet is farthest from the sun. Just as on Earth, winds on Mars are powered by solar heating. Exposure to the sun's rays declines during this season, yet even now, dust devils act relentlessly to clean the surface of freshly deposited dust, a little at a time. Dust devils occur on Earth as well as on Mars. They are spinning columns of air, made visible by the dust they pull off the ground. Unlike a tornado, a dust devil typically forms on a clear day when the ground is heated by the sun, warming the air just above the ground. As heated air near the surface rises quickly through a small pocket of cooler air above it, the air may begin to rotate, if conditions are just right.

Hormonal and other irregularities were detected in the thyroid glands of 10 out of 130 children evacuated from Fukushima Prefecture, a Japanese NGO said today. - The Japan Chernobyl Foundation and Shinshu University Hospital, which is dedicated to aiding victims of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, did blood and urine tests on youngsters aged up to 16 including babies under the age of one for about a month through the end of August in Chino, Nagano, when the children stayed there temporarily after evacuating from Fukushima. One child was found to have a lower-than-normal thyroid hormone level and seven had thyroid stimulation hormone levels higher than the norm. The remaining two were diagnosed with slightly high blood concentrations of a protein called thyroglobulin, possibly caused by damage to their thyroid glands. Three of the 10 children used to live within the 20-km no-go zone around the nuclear plant and one was from the so-called evacuation-prepared area in case of emergency in areas between 20 and 30 kilometers from the plant, while six others were from towns outside such zones.

The Tyrolean Iceman, a 5,300-year-old Copper age individual, was discovered in 1991 on the Tisenjoch Pass in the Italian part of the Ötztal Alps. Here we report the complete genome sequence of the Iceman and show 100% concordance between the previously reported mitochondrial genome sequence and the consensus sequence generated from our genomic data. We present indications for recent common ancestry between the Iceman and present-day inhabitants of the Tyrrhenian Sea, that the Iceman probably had brown eyes, belonged to blood group O and was lactose intolerant. His genetic predisposition shows an increased risk for coronary heart disease and may have contributed to the development of previously reported vascular calcifications. Sequences corresponding to ~60% of the genome of Borrelia burgdorferi are indicative of the earliest human case of infection with the pathogen for Lyme borreliosis.

It appears that the faster-than-light neutrino results, announced last September by the OPERA collaboration in Italy, was due to a mistake after all. A bad connection between a GPS unit and a computer may be to blame. - Physicists had detected neutrinos travelling from the CERN laboratory in Geneva to the Gran Sasso laboratory near L'Aquila that appeared to make the trip in about 60 nanoseconds less than light speed. Many other physicists suspected that the result was due to some kind of error, given that it seems at odds with Einstein's special theory of relativity, which says nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. That theory has been vindicated by many experiments over the decades. According to sources familiar with the experiment, the 60 nanoseconds discrepancy appears to come from a bad connection between a fiber optic cable that connects to the GPS receiver used to correct the timing of the neutrinos' flight and an electronic card in a computer. After tightening the connection and then measuring the time it takes data to travel the length of the fiber, researchers found that the data arrive 60 nanoseconds earlier than assumed. Since this time is subtracted from the overall time of flight, it appears to explain the early arrival of the neutrinos. New data, however, will be needed to confirm this hypothesis.

The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

The study is the first to survey all the world's icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less than previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy. Bristol University glaciologist Prof Jonathan Bamber, who was not part of the research team, said: "The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero."

The melting of Himalayan glaciers caused controversy in 2009 when a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mistakenly stated that they would disappear by 2035, instead of 2350. However, the scientist who led the new work is clear that while greater uncertainty has been discovered in Asia's highest mountains, the melting of ice caps and glaciers around the world remains a serious concern.

Scientists, environmentalists and even World War II historians have reacted with a mixture of excitement and concern to news that Russian geologists have drilled through to a huge subterranean lake in Antarctica, some 20 million years old.

It has taken more than 30 years to work through 3,700 meters of thick ice – drilling in temperatures as low as minus 80 centigrade. But it will have been worth it, if even half the claims being made about the lake are true. Sealed off below the ice for millions of years, the lake is a unique environment. “According to our research, the quantity of oxygen there exceeds that on other parts of our planet by 10 to 20 times. Any life forms that we find are likely to be unique on Earth,” says Sergey Bulat, the Chief Scientist of Russia’s Antarctic Expedition to Russian Reporter magazine. But there is one place not on Earth that has similar conditions – Europa, the mysterious satellite of Jupiter.

USA Today: Russian drillers reach huge lake below Antarctica

After 30 years spent drilling through a four-kilometer-thick ice crust, researchers have finally broken through to a unique subglacial lake. Scientists are set to reveal its 20-million-year-old secrets, and imitate a quest to discover ET life.

The Vostok project breathes an air of mystery and operates at the frontiers of human knowledge. The lake is one of the major discoveries in modern geography; drilling operations at such depths are unprecedented; never before has a geological project required such subtle technologies.

The main inspiration for the project – the Russian scientist who posited the lake’s existence – died just six months before the moment of contact with the lake’s surface. Now, the whole world is looking to Lake Vostok for crucial data which might help to predict climate change.

“Yesterday [on Sunday] our scientists at the Vostok polar station in the Antarctic completed drilling at depths of 3,768 meters and reached the surface of the subglacial lake,” RIA Novosti reported, quoting an unnamed Russian scientist. Meanwhile, Itar-Tass news agency says the scientists still have a few meters to go.

Lake Vostok is a unique closed ecosystem hidden under some four kilometers of ice. Its water has been isolated from the atmosphere – and therefore from any contact with the outside world – since before man existed. The key question for scientists is, could the lake harbour life?

This is fascinating, a nuclear explosion from the Tumbler-Snapper tests performed in Nevada during 1952. It looks different from all nuclear explosions you've seen because it's what it looks like one millisecond after detonation. It looks like a skull by Tim Burton.

The face of atomic death just one second away from unleashing its absolute destruction. Only one millisecond after the bomb explodes, this 65.6-foot (20 meters) ball of fire appears in midair, with spikes that look like rotten teeth or stalactites of fire (called the rope trick effect). The explosion was captured by a Rapid Action Electronic camera—a high speed device designed to photograph nuclear explosions just milliseconds after ignition.

What's a Rapid Action Electronic camera? - The rapatronic camera, as it is called, was created by Harold Edgerton in the 1940s using two polarizing filters and Kerr cell instead of a shutter, which is too slow for this job. A Kerr cell is a panel that changes its polarization depending on the voltage applied. This acts as a very high speed shutter, which allows the perfect exposition to capture this moment.

Scientists are confirming a recent and rare invasion from Mars: meteorite chunks from the red planet that fell in Morocco last July.

This is only the fifth time scientists have confirmed chemically Martian meteorites that people witnessed as they fell. The fireball was spotted in the sky six months ago, but the rocks were not discovered on the ground in North Africa until the end of December. This is an important and unique opportunity for scientists trying to learn about Mars' potential for life. So far, no NASA or Russian spacecraft has returned bits of Mars, so the only Martian samples scientists can examine are those that come here in meteorite showers. Scientists and collectors of meteorites are ecstatic, and already the rocks are fetching big money because they are among the rarest things on Earth, rarer even than gold. [...] Most other Martian meteorite samples sat around on Earth for millions of years, or at the very least for decades, before they were discovered, which makes them tainted with Earth materials and life. These new rocks, while still probably contaminated because they have been on Earth for months, are purer.

The Blaze: Confirmed: Meteorites Did Hit Earth From Mars…And They Cost 10x More Than Gold

CAIRO — Swiss archaeologists have discovered the tomb of a female singer dating back almost 3,000 years in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said on Sunday. The rare find was made accidentally by a team from Switzerland's Basel University headed by Elena Pauline-Grothe and Susanne Bickel in Karnak, near Luxor in Upper Egypt, the minister told the media in Cairo.

The woman, Nehmes Bastet, was a singer for the supreme deity Amon Ra during the Twenty-Second Dynasty (945-712 BC), according to an inscription on a wooden plaque found in the tomb. She was the daughter of the High Priest of Amon, Ibrahim said. The discovery is important because "it shows that the Valley of the Kings was also used for the burial of ordinary individuals and priests of the Twenty-Second Dynasty," he added. Until now the only tombs found in the historic valley were those linked to ancient Egyptian royal families.

A BRITISH scientist has stumbled upon a treasure trove of Charles Darwin's work in a gloomy corner a building where it lay undiscovered for more than 150 years. - Dr Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said today that glass slides containing important Darwin fossils were in an old wooden cabinet that had been shoved in a "gloomy corner" of the massive, drafty British Geological Survey. Using a flashlight to peer into the drawers and hold up a slide, Falcon-Lang saw one of the first specimens he had picked up was labelled "C. Darwin Esq". "It took me a while just to convince myself that it was Darwin's signature on the slide," the paleontologist said, adding he soon realised it was a "quite important and overlooked" specimen. He described the feeling of seeing that famous signature as "a heart in your mouth situation," saying he was wondering "Goodness, what have I discovered". Falcon-Lang's find was a collection of 314 slides of specimens collected by Darwin and other members of his inner circle, including John Hooker - a botanist and dear friend of Darwin - and the Rev John Henslow, Darwin's mentor at Cambridge, whose daughter later married Hooker.

A newly discovered form of chemical intermediary in the atmosphere has the ability to remove pollutants in a way that leads to cloud-formation and could potentially help offset global warming.

The existence of these so-called Criegee biradicals, which are formed when ozone reacts with a certain class of organic compounds, was theorized over fifty years ago, but they have now been created and studied in the laboratory for the first time.

According to Science Daily, the discovery was made possible through the use of a third-generation synchrotron at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory which produces an intense, tunable light that enables scientists to differentiate between molecules which contain the same atoms but arranged in different combinations. The Criegee biradicals — named after Rudolph Criegee, who postulated their existence in the 1950′s — turn out to react with pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, much more rapidly than expected to form sulphates and nitrates. “These compounds,” Science Daily explains, “will lead to aerosol formation and ultimately to cloud formation with the potential to cool the planet.”

Cygnus X, one of the most active regions in the Milky Way
(NASA/Reuters/ScanPix)

Most of the stars in the Milky Way have Earthlike planets meaning there are billions of potentially habitable worlds in our galaxy, a new study claims.

By scouring millions of stars in the night sky over six years, researchers found that the majority of the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way have planets similar to Earth or Mercury, Venus or Mars, the other similar planets in our solar system. They estimated that in our galaxy there are about 10 billion stars with planets in the "habitable zone" – the distance from the star where solid planets can be found – many of which could in theory be capable of supporting life. Dr Martin Dominik, a German research fellow at St Andrews University, said: "Even if life existed on only one planet in each galaxy there would still be 100 billion in the universe. "We still don't have the evidence of life on another planet, and we could be unique, but confronted with these numbers it seems highly unlikely. "There are a small number of planets which we think could harbour life, a small number of candidates with what we believe might be the right conditions."