a light grey circle with tentrils coming off it against a dark grey background

Cosmic Relief with David Grinspoon

Venus Lives!

Don’t disbelieve the hype: New evidence for active volcanic vents on our sister planet is convincing.

a black dot against a grey background with two white lines on either side

Cosmic Relief with David Grinspoon

ET on Earth? 

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence should not exclude our own planet.

Parkes Telescope, aka Murriyang

Astronomy and Society

The True Nature of the Candidate ET Signal From Proxima Centauri

Human-made interference, not extraterrestrial technology, is responsible for the first candidate "signal of interest" detected by the project Breakthrough Listen.

Cosmic Relief with David Grinspoon

NASA Renews Interest in SETI

After a long hiatus, NASA gets back into the SETI game with a workshop on “technosignatures.”

Astronomy & Observing News

SETI Searches Today

Several big hunts are seeking radio and laser emissions from other civilizations among the stars. From the Allen Telescope Array to SETI@home, here's a rundown of all recent and current searches.

Astrobiology

Searching for Alien Needles in the Cosmic Haystack

Humanity’s search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence has been underway, in one form or another, for decades. But how much searching have we really done?

Allen Telescope Array

Orbital Path Podcasts with Michelle Thaller

Orbital Path 1: Must Be Aliens

Host Michelle Thaller talks with Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait about a conundrum: why are humans so quick to explain the unknowns of the cosmos as aliens? And why is this healthy imagination important in science?

Yuri Milner's SETI announcement

Astrobiology

"Breakthrough Listen": Giant Leap for SETI

A $100 million donation will radically speed up the search for artificial signals from the nearest million stars — and from trillions of much farther stars in the 100 nearest galaxies.

People, Places, and Events

SETI Projects Weather Recession

Although funding has eroded for SETI@home and the Allen Telescope Array in the past few years, both alien-hunting projects have survived, thanks to donors and volunteers.

Professional Telescopes

Forced "Hibernation" for SETI Telescope

Astronomers have shut down the innovative Allen Telescope Array in northern California — a huge blow to the ongoing search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Astronomy & Observing News

The Allen Telescope Array: SETI's Next Big Step

SETI researchers have long had to beg time on instruments built for conventional radio astronomy. Now they've built one of their own.

Astronomy & Observing News

Seth Shostak on SETI

Sky & Telescope interviews Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, on the hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Astronomy and Society

A New Do-It-Yourself SETI Project

The Allen Telescope Array is swallowing terabytes of celestial radio data in the ongoing hunt for alien signals from space. The SETI Institute is about to hand out the data to anyone with ideas for new ways to sift it.

Astronomy and Society

The Chance of Finding Aliens

Frank Drake's famous equation helps to quantify our chance of finding ETs — or at least to pose the essential questions.

Astronomy & Observing News

Habitable Moons

It seems unlikely that life could arise on giant, gaseous exoplanets. But what about their moons?

Astronomy & Observing News

Smarter SETI Strategy

Why the world's biggest search should reverse its strategy — and why the first signal we hear will probably come from an extremely powerful civilization extremely far away.

Dan Werthimer

Astronomy & Observing News

SETI Conference: Planning for a Long, Long Search

Searchers for extraterrestrial intelligence reach a humble conclusion: we don't know what we don't know.

Astronomy & Observing News

The Future of SETI

Searches for extraterrestrial intelligence are about to expand into new realms, thanks to new advances in technology — and new thinking.

Astronomy & Observing News

A Big New Step in the Search for ET

The world's largest optical SETI telescope begins sweeping millions of stars for laser signals from alien civilizations.