Scientists can't expect the unexpected if they're not open-minded about how their theories might be wrong.
The Parkes Observatory radio dish, the second largest telescope in the southern hemisphere, has a ‘multibeam’ receiver which can search 13 places in the sky simultaneously for signs of intelligent life.
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The Universe is mind-bogglingly large and with the latest technology, the search is only just starting to heat up.
A Sept. 20 citizen “raid” on Area 51, a secretive military installation long fancied to hold alien remains, has drawn worldwide interest.
Fer Gregory/Shutterstock.com
As more than a million people have indicated plans to partake in a citizen 'raid' on the famed Area 51 to 'see them aliens,' a scholar on the search for extraterrestrial life weighs in on the hype.
An artist’s impression of Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. It is the first planet that NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed to orbit in a star’s habitable zone - the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist.
NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
Josh Calcino, The University of Queensland and Jake Clark, University of Southern Queensland
Life could exist in another solar system in a different part our galaxy. Or in another galaxy far away. We don't have the perfect technology yet to study such far away places but we're still trying.
Artist’s impression of Proxima b, a planet orbiting the star Proxima Centauri within the closest known star system outside of our solar system.
(ESO/M. Kornmesser)
Using AI to search for ET might help us find things we couldn't even imagine we should look for, but to succeed we also have think critically about how we create and use that technology.
Illustration of a gamma ray burst in space.
ESO/A. Roquette
Some argue that it would be impossible to understand an alien language, as it wouldn't have the same grammar as humans use. But others are more optimistic.
Artist’s rendition of one of the billions of rocky exoplanets in our galaxy.
Did life once exist on its surface?
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Complex life may be rare in the universe because most planets become either too hot or too cold before life has a chance to get a foothold. This might explain why we have yet to bump into E.T.
#FoundThem.
ESO/José Francisco Salgado (josefrancisco.org)
The chance that Kepler has spotted construction of a Dyson sphere are very low but it could also be the ruins of such a structure.
Is this what we’re seeing around KIC 8462852 - a colossal megastructure built by alien intelligence? Probably not. The reality might be even more interesting.
Kevin Gill/Flickr
There's a lot of speculation about a star behaving strangely in our galaxy. But even if it's not evidence of alien intelligence, it's sure to be an amazing discovery.