11 articles
In April 1960, radio astronomer Frank Drake quietly aimed an 85-foot dish at two nearby Sun-like stars and tuned to the frequency of hydrogen, betting a civilization would broadcast there. He found silence - and invented modern SETI in the process.
Tabby's Star spent a decade as the most famous 'alien megastructure' candidate in astronomy. A July 2026 study spotted a single symmetric transit in TESS data that fits a giant planet on a three-year orbit. It is suggestive, not confirmed.
A Soviet astrophysicist sorted civilizations into three tiers by the energy they command - a planet, a star, a whole galaxy. It doubles as a search strategy, and when astronomers flagged seven stars as possible Type II megastructures, the trail led somewhere ordinary.
The frequencies of hydrogen and hydroxyl bracket a naturally quiet stretch of the radio sky. Because the two combine to make water, SETI's founders reasoned any curious civilization might gather there - and most searches still listen near it.
Biosignatures look for the chemical exhaust of living things in far-off atmospheres. Technosignatures listen for radio hums and laser pulses from technology. They are the two roads to alien life - and each has its own way of fooling us.
For at least one full 33-day orbit, the VLA and MeerKAT swept the famous exoplanet across radio frequencies sensitive enough to catch a trillion-watt beacon. A SETI team found no artificial signal - though they are careful about what that silence proves.
The Wow! signal hit the exact frequency scientists predicted alien civilizations would broadcast on, was 30 times louder than everything around it, and has never repeated. Here is what scientists actually know.
The Milky Way has 200 billion stars and has existed for 13 billion years. Yet no confirmed signal, no artifact, no visitor has reached us. Scientists call this gap the Fermi Paradox - and its most alarming solution should concern everyone.
For the first time, astronomers had advance warning an interstellar visitor was approaching - and used it to scan 3I/ATLAS for alien tech. The Allen Telescope Array sifted 74 million signal candidates and found nothing artificial aboard.
A new arXiv preprint by Breakthrough Listen researcher Brian Lacki argues that Moon dust could harbor microscopic relics of extinct extraterrestrial megastructures scattered across the galaxy over billions of years.
The International Academy of Astronautics has ratified revised guidelines for verifying and disclosing a potential signal from extraterrestrial intelligence - the first major overhaul since 2010.
