Could the first confirmed signal from an extraterrestrial source be less a hello than a goodbye? Astrophysicist David Kipping argues as much, and his “Eschatian Hypothesis” reimagines the way ...

In 1967, astronomers thought they had finally heard from the neighbors. They intercepted a signal so regular and precise it ...

For decades, science fiction writers have tried their best to prepare us for eventual contact with aliens. Their efforts are dominated by several recurrent tropes. There's the invasion by a warlike ...

A new paper posits that advanced alien civilizations may communicate through subtle flashes, like fireflies do on Earth. The thought experiment suggests that we need to avoid human biases in our ...

In 1995, a pair of scientists discovered a planet outside our solar system orbiting a solar-type star. Since that finding—which won the scientists a portion of the 2019 Nobel Prize in ...

In 1950, famed astrophysicist Enrico Fermi posed a profound question during a casual lunch with colleagues: Where is everybody? In other words, if there’s an extremely high probability that advanced ...

Assuming our solar system’s newest interstellar object isn’t an alien mothership sent here to menace us, humankind still hasn’t spotted any signs of extraterrestrial life, let alone intelligence — ...