Earth had life for roughly three billion years before it produced enough oxygen to be detectable from space, which means NASA's new planet-hunting telescope could be staring directly at an inhabited world and see nothing

Earth had life for roughly three billion years before it produced enough oxygen to be detectable from space, which means NASA's new planet-hunting telescope could be staring directly at an inhabited world and see nothing

The search for alien life relies on a cosmic red herring: Earth itself remained invisible to the very biosignatures astronomers now use to hunt for habitable worlds.