“Hollywood has preconditioned us to expect one of two types of alien contact, either a hostile invasion force or a benevolent ...

Scientists suggest the first alien signal we detect could be a desperate cry for help from a fading civilization.

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 ...

In 1995, a pair of scientists discovered a planet outside our solar system orbiting a solar-type star. Since that finding—which won the scientists a portion of the 2019 Nobel Prize in ...

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 ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I cover aerospace, astronomy & hosted The Cosmic Controversy Podcast. Nov 17, 2025, 05:21am EST Nov 28, 2025, 12:25am EST A team ...

In his classic science fiction novel Contact, Carl Sagan remarked, “The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” Physicist Enrico Fermi is credited with ...

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 ...