Ever since astronomers first detected interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS in July, speculation about its true nature has run wild. Some experts speculate it isn’t a comet at all but rather an extraterrestrial spacecraft sent to sniff around our solar system. New evidence has dumped cold water on this provocative hypothesis. MeerKAT, a radio telescope operated by […]
Aliens Might Not Do Physics Like We Do—and That’s a Problem
At Gizmodo, we love a good story about aliens—especially if it gives us a headache. Personally, I reward extra points for bonus dad jokes. Daniel Whiteson and Andy Warner’s upcoming book, Do Aliens Speak Physics? And Other Questions about Science and the Nature of Reality presents the best combination of all these things. The book imagines […]
Where Are the Aliens? New Study Suggests They’re Stuck Like Us
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 alien civilizations exist somewhere, why haven’t we found evidence of them? That’s how the story goes, at least. But regardless of the circumstances surrounding its […]
Reinventing SETI: Why Our Alien-Hunting Playbook Needs an Upgrade
In this excerpt from his new book, John Gertz argues it’s time to ditch SETI’s old dogmas and rethink how we prepare for first contact. Source link
Scientists Propose a Smarter Way to Hunt for Alien Radio Signals
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has yet to detect alien technosignatures like radio waves, but the cosmos is vast, and there are plenty of places left to look. New research suggests refining our search parameters by using our own broadcasts into deep space as a helpful guide. Research published earlier this week in Astrophysical […]
Intraterrestrials: The Most Alien Life We’ve Ever Seen Is Right Beneath Our Feet
While the possibility of life beyond Earth has long captivated the public, there are already tiny organisms on our own planet that are as alien to us as anything we’ve imagined. These microbes are found in places once thought inhospitable to life, such as inside volcanoes, underneath the Earth’s crust in the deep sea, or […]
We Keep Coming Up Empty in the Search for Alien Life. Here’s What That Could Mean—and What Comes Next
Humans have been pondering the existence of life beyond Earth since ancient times. In the 1900s, scientists began actively searching for proof. Needless to say, we still haven’t found any. Although it’s only been a number of decades and technology is advancing every day, what if we continue to come up empty-handed? In a study […]