“Project Hail Mary,” the movie adaptation to Andy Weir’s 2021 novel about a science teacher attempting to save the Earth from ...

Machine learning is quietly rewriting the rules of the cosmic hunt for company. Instead of waiting to recognize familiar fingerprints of biology, researchers are training algorithms to spot the deeper ...

Within the next 20 years, human beings could discover life on other planets. It was this startling prediction—and the subsequent realization that kids sitting in elementary school classrooms today ...

For most people, the idea of alien contact has been shaped less by astronomy than by cinema. Films have taught us to expect intention: visitors who arrive either with open hands, as in E.T., or with ...