China is claiming that its enormous “Sky Eye” telescope may have picked up trace signals from a distant alien civilization, according to a recently posted and subsequently deleted report by Chinese scientists. Astronomers at Beijing Normal University have discovered “several cases of possible technological traces and extraterrestrial civilizations from outside the Earth,” according to a … Read more
Astronomers have discovered a perplexing trend in Neptune’s atmosphere: Ever since the planet’s southern hemisphere summer began almost two decades ago, atmospheric temperatures in this region have plummeted, and scientists aren’t sure why. Neptune is the most distant planet in the solar system, around 30 times farther from the sun than Earth is. Just like … Read more
So far no one has found evidence of intelligent aliens elsewhere in the cosmos. But if they do exist, they might be hanging out on Dyson spheres circling the husks of sunlike stars called white dwarfs scattered throughout the Milky Way, a new paper argues. And that’s there we should be focusing our search for … Read more
The Milky Way is home to millions of potentially habitable planets — and approximately four of them may harbor evil alien civilizations that would invade Earth if they could, new research posted to the preprint database arXiv (opens in new tab) suggests. The new paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, poses a peculiar question: … Read more
Dark matter, the elusive substance that accounts for the majority of the mass in the universe, may be made up of massive particles called gravitons that first popped into existence in the first moment after the Big Bang. And these hypothetical particles might be cosmic refugees from extra dimensions, a new theory suggests. The researchers’ … Read more
Scientists have crafted a new message for any intelligent extraterrestrials who might be out there. And they want feedback on whether they should send it. The technology needed to send the message is not yet ready. And if and when the note is transmitted, it would take thousands of years for it to reach its … Read more
After nearly 13.8 billion years of nonstop expansion, the universe could soon grind to a standstill, then slowly start to contract, new research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests. In the new paper, three scientists attempt to model the nature of dark energy — a mysterious force that seems … Read more
An area of Pluto that researchers think was formed from the eruption of ice volcanoes is unique on the dwarf planet and in the solar system, a new study suggests. NASA’s New Horizons mission, which launched in 2006, took detailed photos of the surface of Pluto, a dwarf planet and the largest object in the … Read more
A seemingly intractable black hole paradox first proposed by physicist Stephen Hawking could finally be resolved — by wormholes through space-time. The “black hole information paradox” refers to the fact that information cannot be destroyed in the universe, and yet when a black hole eventually evaporates, whatever information was gobbled up by this cosmic vacuum … Read more
A possible galaxy that exists some 13.5 billion light-years from Earth has broken the record for farthest astronomical object ever seen. That age places this collection of stars, now dubbed HD1, between a time of total darkness — about 14 billion years ago the universe was a blank slate devoid of any stars or galaxies … Read more
