One night about 60 years ago, physicist Enrico Fermi looked up into the sky and asked, “Where is everybody?” He was talking about aliens. Today, scientists know that there are millions, perhaps billions of planets in the universe that could sustain life. So, in the long history of everything, why hasn’t any of this life … Read more
An advanced alien civilization may want to cruise around the galaxy, and the best way to do that is by steering their binary star system, a researcher proposes in a new paper. Long-lived civilizations may have many motivations for wanting to move somewhere else in the galaxy. They may need to escape an impending supernova, … Read more
In the 2016 science fiction movie Arrival, a linguist is faced with the daunting task of deciphering an alien language consisting of palindromic phrases, which read the same backwards as they do forwards, written with circular symbols. As she discovers various clues, different nations around the world interpret the messages differently — with some assuming … Read more
Tiny photosynthetic microbes could be secretly thriving on Mars — hiding inside small bubbles of liquid water in the thin layers of dusty ice that litter the Red Planet’s surface, a new NASA-led study reveals. Researchers believe the icy patches could be among the most promising targets in the hunt for extraterrestrial life within our … Read more
“Warp drives” used by super-advanced alien civilizations may create specific space-time ripples in their wake that we can spot from Earth, a new paper argues. However, the jury is still out on whether the faster-than-light technology is even possible to create in the first place. A warp drive is a hypothetical device that enables an … Read more
Low-temperature hydrothermal vents could survive on the dark ocean floors of moons like Jupiter’s Europa for potentially billions of years, new computer simulations have shown, as astrobiologists strive to figure out whether these alien oceans could be habitable. Hydrothermal vents are both a source of chemical energy and heat, and are one of the possible … Read more
If intelligent aliens are searching for other advanced lifeforms in the galaxy, our cell phone towers could be the beacons that give Earthlings away. New research suggests that advanced aliens in nearby star systems could probably already detect radio signals from cell phone towers. And as these signals become more powerful, humanity’s calling card will … Read more
Could an alien mothership be hovering around the solar system, sending out tiny probes to explore planets? According to a Harvard scientist and a Pentagon official, it’s possible. In a draft paper, the pair said it is feasible an extraterrestrial spaceship could be in our galactic neighborhood, exploring the region by the means of “dandelion … Read more
Using a new machine-learning algorithm, scientists have picked up eight extraterrestrial signals that seem to bear the hallmarks of technology. The research, published Jan. 30 in the journal Nature Astronomy, doesn’t claim to have really found proof of intelligent aliens; a brief follow-up search for the signals detected in the study turned up only silence. … Read more
Are aliens using a quirk of the sun’s gravity to transmit information through an interstellar communication network? For the first time ever, astronomers explored this intriguing possibility and scanned for signals coming from hidden nonhuman probes orbiting the sun. So far, the method hasn’t turned up signs of spacefaring aliens, but it represents a promising … Read more
