The first unmistakable signal from another intelligence would rank alongside fire and writing in the story of our species, ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

For decades, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has focused on subtle whispers in the cosmic noise, the faint, ...

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 ...

Where are all the aliens? No, I don’t mean microbes on Mars or creatures swimming beneath the ice crusts of Europa or Enceladus, but honest-to-God intelligent aliens, capable of space travel? The ...

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 ...

Complex, intelligent life in the galaxy appears vanishingly rare, with the nearest possible civilization perhaps 33,000 light-years distant. Yet despite the odds, scientists insist that continuing the ...

The Fermi Paradox ponders an endlessly fascinating question: If so many worlds exist in the universe, why haven’t we detected any sign of extraterrestrial life? A possible reason, called the ...

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Reinventing SETI: New Directions in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, published by Oxford University Press in August 2025. John Gertz is the ...

The Drake Equation helps scientists estimate the odds of finding intelligent alien civilizations. It’s an age-old question: Do aliens exist? And what are the odds we’ll make contact? A famous ...