Topic: Debra Fischer

Crowdsourcing science: how gamers are changing scientific discovery

Computer gamers who cracked a decades-long AIDS mystery in three weeks embody a rising trend among researchers: enlisting the skills of everyday people to help with scientific discovery.

Kepler telescope's astonishing haul: 54 planet-candidates in 'habitable zone'

The Kepler space telescope is designed to look for planets like Earth that could have life. But no one expected it to find 54 planet-candidates at Goldilocks distances from their stars – not too warm or cold for life as we know it – in its first four months of operation.

Planet hunters find an Earth-mass planet and a potential water world

Kepler mission to hunt for planets just our size

The US will launch the Kepler spacecraft Friday to look for other Earths.

Across the Milky Way, more planet Earths?

Two new discoveries suggest that sunlike solar systems like ours – with life-hosting planets – are more common than previously thought.