In our own solar system, robots such as the Mars rover Perseverance are collecting samples in search of fossils or molecules that might suggest that microbial life flourished on the Red Planet billions of years ago, when it was warmer and …

Sensitive telescopes, like the James Webb Space Telescope, can pick up tiny variations in the light coming off of faraway exoplanets, allowing researchers to detect oxygen, sulfur or other gases that might indicate that microbes are at wor…

The effort continues today with the Allen Telescope Array, a 42-antenna array that can tune in to microwave frequencies from across the Milky Way. The SETI Institute is also launching an effort to detect laser pulses that far-flung intelli…

The first serious radio-based search for extraterrestrial life occurred in 1960. It was masterminded by astronomer Frank Drake, who used two radio telescopes to search for signals from planets potentially orbiting stars 10 and 12 light-yea…

The first efforts in the search for extraterrestrial life started well before humans had the capacity to get off our own planet. According to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, the invention of radio opened the …

Are aliens real?It's a good question. There currently isn't any evidence for life on other planets, but the universe is a big place, and it seems unlikely that out of the trillions of planets presumed to exist in our 13.8 billion-year-old …

“It could be that those children who showed greater arousal were not cognisant of any form of selfishness, and/or notions of co-operative co-existence or obligations as described,” says Nagel, who has written several books related to neuro…

However, Mike Nagel, associate professor of human development and learning at the University of the Sunshine Coast, in Queensland, says many other studies suggest the age at which children fully understand altruism, selfishness and concept…

Study co-author Margarita Svetlova says this illustrates children’s growing understanding of norms of co-operative co-existence and the obligations they entail.“Humans are highly social creatures, which can mean cooperative in some context…

To test what young children understand about the interactions involved in completing a joint task, the researchers paired 72 three-year-olds with partners (for a total of 144 children) to complete a task in which both pulled on a rope to m…

The results point to young children having a stronger understanding of joint commitments than has previously been understood, which has important implications for parents and preschool teachers, Kachel argues. “Those working with children …

Now researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (in Germany) and Duke University suggest that children as young as three have a sense of joint commitment and express resentment when others opt out of shared, agree…

How innate is the co-operative spirit? Does it develop naturally alongside a child’s sense of self and interactions with others, or is it cultivated through socialisation and education?Complex though this question is, part of the puzzle mi…