New: Friday, March 10 2017

IN A SCENE resembling a science fiction movie, an alien-like spider sheds its skin. Found in subtropical regions, amblypygi – or whip spiders – are an ancient order of arachnids dating back to the Carboniferous period more than 300million years ago.

While our chances of detecting alien life are now better than they've ever been, the truth is that such a discovery is almost certainly still out of reach, because we lack both the technology and scientific knowledge to make it. Before we can point to ...