Space, features and articles | Educational Science

Jul 2, 2021

Most Americans think intelligent aliens exist, and half think they have visited Earth

For the last few weeks, the imminent release of a U.S. intelligence report on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) had stirred excitement across the United States. So it's not surprising to find that most Americans believe in intelligent life inhabiting other worlds, according to a survey conducted before the report was...

Jul 14, 2021

How to tell if extraterrestrial visitors are friend or foe

Despite the naive storylines about interstellar travel in science fiction, biological creatures were not selected by Darwinian evolution to survive travel between stars. Such a trip would necessarily span many generations, since even at the speed of light, it would take tens of thousands of years to travel between stars...

Jul 15, 2021

'Alien burp' may have been detected by NASA's Curiosity rover

A group of scientists may have just pinpointed the location on Mars of a mysterious source of methane, a gas most often produced by microbes — and NASA's Curiosity rover could be right on top of it. Methane blips have pinged on Curiosity's detection systems six times since the rover...

Jul 26, 2021

Harvard-led team to search cosmos for extraterrestrial space tech and UFOs

Are there intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations capable of building technologies that can travel between the stars? An international research project is poised to find out. The Galileo Project, helmed by a multi-institutional team of scientists led by Avi Loeb, a professor of science in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University,...

Aug 13, 2021

Two planes report 'bright green UFO' swooping through the clouds over Canada

Late on July 30, pilots of two separate aircrafts — one military and one commercial — reported seeing a mysterious green UFO vanish into the clouds over the Gulf of Saint Lawrence on the Atlantic coast of Canada, Vice News reported. According to a report posted Aug. 11 to the...

Aug 30, 2021

Alien life could thrive on big 'Hycean' exoplanets

The search for alien life should broaden its horizons a bit, a new study suggests. Alien hunters have to date focused largely on Earthlike planets — a reasonable place to start, given that our rocky, water-covered world is the only one we know of that hosts life. But the universe...

Oct 14, 2021

'Powerful auroras' on alien planets may be sending strange radio signals toward Earth

Four brand-new alien planets have potentially been discovered after scientists detected the shimmering radio flashes of auroras in those planets' atmospheres, a new study says. Auroras occur when solar wind — intense gusts of electric particles belched out by the sun — smash into a planet's magnetic shield. Earth experiences...

Oct 26, 2021

Sorry folks: 'Alien' signal from Proxima Centauri was likely just a broken computer on Earth

A strange radio signal once thought to be a possible sign of alien intelligence in a nearby star system was likely created by a broken piece of human technology, according to new research. On April 29, 2019, astronomers detected a signal beaming toward Earth, it seemed, from Proxima Centauri —...

Nov 1, 2021

Why extraterrestrial intelligence is more likely to be artificial than biological

Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? It’s a question that has been debated for centuries, if not millennia. But it is only recently that we’ve had an actual chance of finding out, with initiatives such as (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) using radio telescopes to actively listen for radio...

Nov 13, 2021

'Doughnut UFO' over Switzerland defies explanation

On the night of Monday, Nov. 8, a photographer in Zurich, Switzerland, who goes by the Twitter handle @Eavix1Eavix aimed his camera at the sky and snapped several pictures of what he aptly described as a doughnut UFO. Composed of several bright-blue concentric rings, the flying object looked as much...

Nov 27, 2021

How would we give aliens directions to Earth?

The universe is inconceivably large and mind-bogglingly old. Given all that time and space, it seems probable that somewhere, sometime, another spark of intelligence flared into existence. But if there are intelligent beings somewhere out there, how on Earth could we connect with them and, assuming we'd like to be...

Nov 30, 2021

This doomed alien planet has a year that lasts just 16 hours — and it's getting faster

Astronomers have broken yet another record, spotting a new gas giant with the shortest known orbit. The world takes just 16 hours to circle its star — but someday, the dance may come to an abrupt end. The newly announced exoplanet belongs to a category scientists refer to as hot...

Dec 28, 2021

9 things we learned about aliens in 2021

A doughnut UFO in the skies over Switzerland. Strange green lights vanishing into the clouds above Canada. A saucer-shaped blob plunging suddenly into the ocean. The year 2021 gave truth-seekers and alien hunters no shortage of mysteries to ponder. But it also gave them answers — from a hotly anticipated...

Jan 11, 2022

Pentagon launches new UFO office. Not all believers are happy about it.

A new office in the Pentagon will investigate sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) — but longtime UFO enthusiasts are skeptical. According to NBC, putting the new Unidentified Aerial Phenomena program in the purview of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security has some UFOlogists...

Jan 18, 2022

Scorching alien planet takes seasons to an extreme

Scientists got a close look at an extreme case of seasons thanks to a retired NASA telescope. Researchers used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to film a year on an exoplanet called XO-3b. Conveniently, a year on this world lasts only three Earth days. Within that time, the exoplanet experiences a...