A new paper posits that advanced alien civilizations may communicate through subtle flashes, like fireflies do on Earth. The ...

It is unclear whether a [3I/ATLAS] would transmit radio signals … such signals would take tens of thousands of years to cross ...

Machine learning is quietly rewriting the rules of the cosmic hunt for company. Instead of waiting to recognize familiar ...

From Viking to Perseverance, scientists have spent decades chasing chemical hints that could point to life beyond Earth.

Historically, many scientists and society have been fascinated by the prospect of making contact with extraterrestrial ...

We’re celebrating 180 years of Scientific American. Explore our legacy of discovery and look ahead to the future. In the late 1800s Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli pointed a telescope at Mars ...

NASA has selected advanced technologies to power a future space telescope designed to image Earth-like planets and search ...

NASA's alien-hunting Europa Clipper spacecraft took seven hours of ultraviolet observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS while both objects zoom toward Jupiter. When you purchase through links on ...

Science fiction writer and futurist Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” And perhaps that fear is what ...

Within the next 20 years, human beings could discover life on other planets. It was this startling prediction—and the subsequent realization that kids sitting in elementary school classrooms today ...

From the physical world to the biological universe: Democritus to Lowell -- Plurality of worlds and the decline of anthropocentrism -- Life in the solar system: the limits of observation -- Planetary ...

Forget the grainy footage of 'flying saucers' or the campy sci-fi tropes of little green men from Mars; the search for ...