Educational Science

Repeated signals from the center of the Milky Way could be aliens saying hello, new study claims

Could intelligent aliens be lurking at the heart of the Milky Way? A new search for extraterrestrial life aims to find out by listening for radio pulses from the center of our galaxy. Narrow-frequency pulses are naturally emitted by stars called pulsars, but they're also used deliberately by humans in...

'Leaking' cell phone towers could lead aliens straight to Earth, new study suggests

If intelligent aliens are searching for other advanced lifeforms in the galaxy, our cell phone towers could be the beacons that give Earthlings away. New research suggests that advanced aliens in nearby star systems could probably already detect radio signals from cell phone towers. And as these signals become more...

Could an alien mothership be hovering around the solar system, sending out tiny probes to explore planets? According to a Harvard scientist and a Pentagon official, it’s possible. In a draft paper, the pair said it is feasible an extraterrestrial spaceship could be in our galactic neighborhood, exploring the region...

Aliens could be hiding in 'terminator zones' on planets with eternal night

Imagine if one side of the Earth always faced the sun. Half of the planet would be stuck in perpetual daylight, the other shrouded in permanent night. But for aliens in other solar systems, our doomsday scenario may be their everyday — and life might get along just fine. In...

Earth may have debris from alien star systems trapped in its orbit, new research suggests

Astronomers have found that renegade objects from alien star systems could be captured by Earth's gravity and linger in orbit around our planet for potentially millions of years. However, most of these objects would likely be too small to detect with current telescopes, according to a new study published May...

Aliens might be using a nearby supernova to get our attention, new study suggests

Astronomers have their eyes on a new ultrabright explosion in space: a Type II supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as M101). A Type II supernova is the catastrophic end to a massive star's life, and this new one, called SN 2023ixf, is the nearest bang to Earth in...

Are aliens real?

Are aliens real? It's a good question. There currently isn't any evidence for life on other planets, but the universe is a big place, and it seems unlikely that out of the trillions of planets presumed to exist in our 13.8 billion-year-old universe, only Earth has ever hosted life. (This...

Why are we seeing so many UFOs over America all of a sudden?

In the span of two weeks in February 2023, U.S. military pilots shot down four mysterious objects spotted over the United States and Canada. The military identified the first of these objects as a 200-foot-tall (60 meters) Chinese spy balloon, floating approximately 60,000 feet (18,200 meters) over Alaska in late...

James Webb telescope discovers gargantuan geyser on Saturn's moon, blasting water hundreds of miles into space

Scientists caught Saturn's icy moon Enceladus spraying a huge plume of watery vapor far into space — and that plume likely contains many of the chemical ingredients for life. Scientists detailed the eruption — glimpsed by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in November 2022 — at a conference at...

'Unstable' moons may be obliterating alien life across the universe

The moon crashing into Earth may sound like an unrealistic doomsday scenario or the stuff of sci-fi disasters. But for some planets in other star systems, such catastrophic collisions may be common. New research published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society uses computer simulations to show...