This week at the Gizmodo science desk, deputy editor George Dvorsky reported on a modification to the famous Drake Equation that produces a rather sobering result about the number of extraterrestrial intelligences in our Galaxy. Health reporter Ed Cara chronicles a mysterious disease from the 1500s that vanished from…
Astronomer Frank Drake formulated his influential equation in 1961 to estimate the number of civilizations in the Milky Way capable of communicating with us. Our understanding of planetary science has changed a lot since then, leading a team of scientists to propose a pair of important adjustments that produce an…
Scientists have spotted a rocky exoplanet with a possible atmosphere, which they believe may be burbling out from a magma ocean on the distant world.
Speculation about extraterrestrials is not all that new. There was a vibrant debate in 17th-century Europe about the existence of life on other planets.
In a little more than 30 years, we went from knowing only of the planets in our star system to discovering over 5,000 distant worlds spread across the cosmos. So far, none have looked quite like Earth. If an Earth-like planet was orbiting another star, however, it may look different than our precious pale blue dot. In…
NASA’s Europa Clipper is launching in October, and it’s set to unveil the secrets of one of the most intriguing celestial bodies in our solar system. Coming along for the ride is a commemorative plate that symbolizes humanity’s fascination with Jupiter’s mysterious moon Europa and our relentless quest to find…
A recent SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) effort focused on a famous supernova from 1987, working under the premise that aliens might use such events to draw attention to themselves with synchronized beacons. Although this hunt came up short, it lays the groundwork for future searches using the same…
A new NASA experiment will take to the skies on a balloon, scanning the space between the stars of our galaxy and listening for cosmic ingredients to understand how the Milky Way evolved over time.
The SETI Institute, a leading non-profit in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, has received a transformative $200 million gift from the estate of Franklin Antonio, a long-time supporter who passed away last year.
