The first unmistakable signal from another intelligence would rank alongside fire and writing in the story of our species, yet a growing group of researchers warns that such a moment might arrive not ...

Earthlings, brace yourselves: the galaxy may be emptier than your last Tinder date. According to a new study, any alien civilizations out there? Probably short-lived — and doomed to fail spectacularly ...

A new paper posits that advanced alien civilizations may communicate through subtle flashes, like fireflies do on Earth. The thought experiment suggests that we need to avoid human biases in our ...

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 ...

Is anybody out there? Probably. Most stars have planets; we've discovered more than 6,000 exoplanets thus far, and the most basic statistics point toward the existence of countless potentially ...

For decades, science fiction writers have tried their best to prepare us for eventual contact with aliens. Their efforts are dominated by several recurrent tropes. There's the invasion by a warlike ...

When ET phones home, it could be his last call. Contrary to sci-fi movie depictions, our first contact might not be with a super advanced alien civilization at the height of power. Rather, Ivy League ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. An artist’s impression of ...

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 ...