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The Truth About Whether We’ve Actually Discovered Alien Life, According to Astrobiologists

Recent Mars and exoplanet findings made huge headlines, but most experts still aren’t convinced we’ve found aliens yet.

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Every few months, someone announces we’re on the verge of finding alien life, and the headlines go predictably insane. What rarely makes it into those stories is what the actual scientific community thinks—as opposed to the two or three researchers who picked up the phone.

Well, now, there’s data on that. Researchers at Durham University’s C-Scope group surveyed hundreds of astrobiologists following two major 2025 announcements, each of which set off the usual media frenzy. The first involved exoplanet K2-18b, where scientists detected possible atmospheric traces of molecules associated with biological activity on Earth. The second was a Martian rock called “Cheyava Falls,” which NASA said preserved potential biosignatures—mineral........

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