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Valentine's day is coming up, which means it's time to get romantic with your alien loved one. But how exactly do you do the deed with someone whose DNA comes from the other side of the galaxy? How do you negotiate differing erogenous zones and the possibility that your lover may want to eat you after the act? Read our handy primer on getting down and dirty with a member of an extraterrestrial species. More »
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When you consider the utter vastness of space, it isn't hard to accept that, somewhere out there, extraterrestrial life probably exists. That being said, one can just as soon reason that the Universe is so immense, the odds of us actually finding evidence for the existence of alien organisms are probably pretty slim. Given the mind-boggling hugeness of the cosmos, where would we even begin looking for signs of life? More »
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What would non-carbon-based life really be like? What would it want from us? Bruce Dorminey, science journalist and author of "Distant Wanderers: The Search for Planets Beyond the Solar System," interviews NASA astrochemist Max Bernstein about the possibility of silicon-based life, in an article from Universe Today. More »
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The aliens have arrived, and they want to initiate cultural exchange...starting small at first. Our extraterrestrial visitors want a few humans to go live with them, and in return, a few aliens will come live among us. They're seeking volunteers. More »
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Head to Cybertron, with an excerpt from the novelization of Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Plus new clips from Super 8 and Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, and two new Tintin posters! And the synopsis for Nacho Vigalondo's new alien-invasion movie. More »
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This week, the SETI Institute announced that it would have to shut down its large radio telescope facility, called the Allen Telescope Array, near the California mountain town Hat Creek. For over a decade, SETI has used the 42 radio dishes in its array to scan the skies for possible communications from extraterrestrial intelligence. More »
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Has ET evolved to be discreet? An evolutionary tendency for inconspicuous aliens would solve a nagging paradox – and also suggest that we Earthlings should think twice before advertising our own existence. More »
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Our total destruction at the hands (or tentacles) of alien visitors has been gloriously featured on book covers since the dawn of science fiction. Writing in Granta Magazine, Jeremy Sheldon explores why so many book covers feature horrifying extraterrestrials. More »
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As a fan of I Love Lucy since childhood, I've always been pleased that this show - and not, say, Milton Berle or Sid Caesar - is the one always referred to when talking about Earth being detected by other civilizations. And when I first thought about it, the idea that there was a detectable bubble of TV transmission forging out into the galaxy since Lucy's first show in 1951 seemed completely wondrous. I Love Lucy is 60 light years from us now, or will be with this October's anniversary of that first show. I've always wondered what extraterrestrials would make of Fred Mertz. More »
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Why is it that astrobiologists consider water a prerequisite when seeking out alien life? Steve Nerlich of Universe Today has the details. More »
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It occurred to me the other day that many fictional alien species conform to a small number of body plans: humanoid, insectoid, feline, robot, and reptilian. More »
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Since November 2007, six meteorites have hit Radivoje Lajic's home in Gornji Lajici, Bosnia. The meteorites always careen into his home whenever it is raining. Lajici's explanation? Angry aliens are bombarding him for some unknown slight. More »
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The following essay explores an oft ignored concern in extraterrestrial research — what color would an alien's trousers be (if he/she/it were even wearing trousers)? More »
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Advanced alien civilizations could be out there, but currently we are searching for the wrong signs of life. Richard Carrigan of Fermilab contends that we should try looking for the telltale signs of massive star engines. More »
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Extremophiles challenge everything we thought we knew about the existence of life on Earth. Now, astrobiologists are questioning if some extremophiles are actually aliens living among us. Just who are these incredible creatures, and what can we learn from them? More »
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Astrophysicist Ragbir Bhathal works with SETI to scan the skies for possible communications from extraterrestrial intelligences. Unlike most SETI facilities, which look for radio signals, Bhathal's looks for laser pulses. And now he's found one. More »
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Jeff Peckman, who came to national attention earlier this year when he launched a ballot initiative to create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission in Denver and later announced that he possessed actual footage of a live ET, continues his campaign to thrust alien life into the political limelight. This week, he invited Barack Obama to hear a briefing on UFOs and extraterrestrial life from a private citizen's perspective. Adjust your tin foil hat and find out what Peckman has to say to the presidential candidate and why he wants to say it before the election. More »
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Remember alien invasions? Strange creatures from beyond the stars, showing up on Earth and attempting to subjugate the heck out of us? Wasn't that cool? What ever happened to those would-be dominators anyway? The only recent alien invasion movie I can think of was the Nicole Kidman Invasion... which is best forgotten anyway. What would it take to bring extraterrestrial land-grabs back to the big or small screen? More »
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Time for a little reality check. It seems like almost every day there's a piece of news about how "research suggests there were once oceans floating in the vacuum of space!" or "life could have once existed at the center of the Sun!" You know, we all get a little over-excited sometimes. Well, geochemist Nicholas Tosca of Harvard University put a damper on our enthusiasm yesterday when he calculated that early oceans on Mars were between 10 and 100 times more salty than seawater here on Earth. Even worse, they were probably highly acidic. But pro-Mars life scientists aren't giving up without a fight, After the break, some hopeful scientists speak out on why following Mars' ancient water supply could still lead us to the aliens. More »
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Want to make a good impression on extraterrestrial civilization we encounter? The best bet is to showcase our dark side — our foibles, our mistakes and even our most horrifying aspects, says Douglas Vakoch, director of message for the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute. It's too bad the Voyager spacecraft only contained Pollyanna-ish messages about our lovely aspects, and our propensity for cooperation, because any advanced spacefaring races we come across will probably just think we're not just primitives, but lacking in self-awareness. More »
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Disney is readying another Witch Mountain movie, although they're calling it a "re-imagining" and not a remake. Probably since they already went down the remake route 10 years ago. The new movie will be called Race To Witch Mountain, and may feature Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as someone determined to squash all of your childhood memories. It's even being directed by Andy Fickman, who gave you The Rock in The Game Plan. Hollywood, please let us know when you decide to stop pillaging the past and start making some cool new original stuff, like the first Witch Mountain movies, which are the subject of today's triviagasm. Everything you wanted to know about these great movies featuring alien kids in the 1970s below. More »
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Scientists have known for a while that the building blocks of Earth life, amino acids, are also found in space. Traces of amino acids have been studied in countless meteorites. But now Arizona State researcher Sandra Pizzarello says Earth amino acids also share the same basic structure with those from distant space. This discovery, announced yesterday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could mean that extraterrestrial life would share other structural similarities with Earth life — like symmetrical bodies, for instance — especially if that life had developed from amino acids the way we did. More »
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