Scientists discovered that methyl halides, a gas produced by microbes, could be a biosignature for life on distant planets.

As of January 2012, the tally of confirmed alien worlds has skyrocketed ... Of those, as many as ten billion may be rocky planets like Earth. Future searches with improved monitoring technology ...

The burgeoning exoplanet catalog has delivered a multitude of planets that really emphasize the "alien" in "alien worlds ... surface gravity of over ten times that of Earth," Vargic said.

Until now, researchers have been able to determine the atmospheric chemical composition for some planets outside our solar system - called exoplanets - but without mapping the vertical structure ...