Robert Smith is convinced the aliens have won. "The invasion has happened—it's all over," says the University of Alberta space historian who teaches a course on the history of extraterrestrials ..read more

The idea that aliens may have visited the Earth is becoming increasingly popular. Around a fifth of UK citizens believe Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials, and an estimated 7% believe that they have seen a UFO ..read more

The SETI Institute, the Berkeley SETI Research Center and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research announced a study using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Western Australia. Led by Dr. Chenoa Tremblay of the SETI Institute and Prof. Steven Tingay of Curtin University, this research is the first to search for signs of alien technology in galaxies beyond our own, focusing on low radio frequencies (100 MHz ..read more

Enrico Fermi's lunchtime question at wartime Los Alamos, "Where is everybody?" has been both a gift and a problem to scientists ever since. Known as "Fermi's Paradox," it simply asks, why, since life on Earth is ubiquitous and developed very early in Earth's history, and the galaxy is very old and not overly large, aren't there intelligent, advanced extraterrestrials everywhere? In particular, why can't we detect any, and why haven't any (obvious) aliens visited us ..read more

In 1971, English mathematical physicist and Nobel-prize winner Roger Penrose proposed how energy could be extracted from a rotating black hole. He argued that this could be done by building a harness around the black hole's accretion disk, where infalling matter is accelerated to close to the speed of light, triggering the release of energy in multiple wavelengths ..read more

Florida Tech astrobiologist Manasvi Lingam has asked life's biggest questions from a young age. Though he can't recall his exact queries, he says his interests were perfectly consistent with those of other children: dinosaurs and aliens ..read more

In 1977, astronomers received a powerful, peculiar radio signal from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. Its frequency was the same as neutral hydrogen, and astronomers had speculated that any ETIs attempting to communicate would naturally use this frequency. Now the signal, named the Wow! Signal has become lore in the SETI world ..read more

We know that the Earth has an iron core surrounded by a mantle of silicate bedrock and water (oceans) on its surface. Science has used this simple planet model until today for investigating exoplanets—planets that orbit another star outside our solar system ..read more

Using seismic activity to probe the interior of Mars, geophysicists have found evidence for a large underground reservoir of liquid water—enough to fill oceans on the planet's surface ..read more

Are there any advanced alien civilizations elsewhere in our galaxy? We don't know. All we do know is that there is at least one. Should we be optimistic or pessimistic about finding others ..read more