In 1983, the theoretical physicist Brandon Carter concluded that the time it took for humans to evolve on Earth -- relative to the total lifespan of the Sun - suggests that our evolutionary origin was intrinsically unlikely.
Astrobiologists are working to discover universal rules that govern the emergence of complex physical and biological systems on Earth and beyond.
The chances of intelligent life emerging in our Universe - and in any hypothetical ones beyond it - can be estimated by a new theoretical model which has echoes of the famous Drake Equation.
If quantum communication exists, that could be a win for advanced technologies on our planet, but the process would make it impossible for us to detect it without some serious equipment upgrades.
The signal, recorded in 1977, was at first suspected to be an alien transmission. Now scientists suggest the 47-year-old radio signal was the result of a rare event that caused a massive cloud of hydrogen to shine super brightly.
The Milky Way is so huge and old that statistically, there should be plenty of intelligent civilizations that have colonized their own star systems or neighboring ones, and at least a few that have spread across the galaxy.
One group of scientists thinks that we may already have detected technosignatures from a technological civilization's Dyson spheres, but the detection is hidden in our vast troves of astronomical data.
Could AI be the universe's "great filter" – a threshold so hard to overcome that it prevents most life from evolving into space-faring civilizations?
The Great Filter is a hypothesized event or situation that prevents intelligent life from becoming interplanetary and interstellar and even leads to its demise. Artificial Super Intelligence could be the Great Filter.
Some 100 light-years from the Solar System dwells the most mathematically perfect planetary system we've ever seen. The star at its center – a temperate orange dwarf called HD 110067 – is orbited by six exoplanets.
Spanish professor argues that that water or other liquid-dwelling aliens, as well as civilizations on super-Earths, may actually be trapped on their planets due to "physical limitations".
With only one habitable planet (Earth) and one technologically advanced civilization (humanity) as examples, scientists are still confined to theorizing where other intelligent life forms could be.
The Breakthrough Listen Investigation for Periodic Spectral Signals (BLIPSS) project is designed to seek and amplify strangely pulsed radio emission from the galactic center that may be messages from extraterrestrial intelligences.
Astronomers searching for radio signals that could be signs of extraterrestrial life have just gained access to South Africa's MeerKAT telescope.
The signal appears to emanate from the direction of our neighboring star and cannot yet be dismissed as Earth-based interference, raising the very faint prospect that it is a transmission from extraterrestrial intelligence.
