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…
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.
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…
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.
An encouraging new study has found that the interference from exoplanets—planets that orbit stars outside our solar system—has been overestimated in searches for extraterrestrial signals.
