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How to watch this week's Congressional UFO hearing
A Congressional subcommittee is set to hold a hearing into UFOs. The panel will hear "firsthand accounts" of UFOs and "assess the federal government’s transparency and accountability" regarding possible threats to national security. You can watch Wednesday's hearing here.
Astrophysicist who claimed to find alien tech may have done the science wrong
Last month, theoretical physicist Avi Loeb made headlines with the sensational claim that tiny spherules recovered from the bottom of the ocean were probably of alien origin. “It’s most likely a technological gadget with artificial intelligence,” he said to The New York Times, which published a story today about the Harvard professor’s contentious claims. Although the biggest scientific breakthroughs often start with a bold hypothesis, Loeb’s peers believe the decorated astrophysicist’s assertions can be called many things — but “good science” isn’t one of them.
Southern hemisphere’s largest radio telescope joins search for extraterrestrial tech
The Breakthrough Listen project will now be able to search more than a million stars within two years as it searches for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life.
A single-player Aliens game is in the works for PC, consoles and VR
Developer Survios says it will be an action-horror title.
'Aliens: Dark Descent' is a single-player, squad-based action game coming in 2023
It's heading to PC and consoles.
Pentagon forms new task force to investigate UFO sightings
The Pentagon has established a new group to investigate UFO sightings.
Hitting the Books: What exactly did Jodi Foster hear in 'Contact'?
As Naomi Pequette argues in her essay "The Sounds of Contact" as part of The Science if Sci-Fi Cinema collection, being "based on a true story" doesn't exactly mean we're getting the whole story.
'Fortnite' will host another big season-ending event on September 12th
The alien invasion-centric season will soon come to an end.
'Aliens: Fireteam Elite' is an arcade shooter for the online era
Remember Area 51? It feels like that, but for modern hardware.
'No Man's Sky' update lets players adopt aliens as pets
You can ride giant creatures and companions can help you while you're exploring.
How to guesstimate the number of alien civilizations in a galaxy
“Before Drake's work, this question would have seemed to be beyond the realm of scientific inquiry,” Westby told Engadget. fp is the fraction of those stars that have planets. fl is the fraction of those planets that actually do develop life at some point.
China's giant radio telescope will start searching for aliens in September
China's FAST radio telescope will join the search for signs of extraterrestrial life in September.
Pentagon officially releases 'UFO' footage
The officially-released videos show UFOs darting around US skies.
Hitting the Books: We won't colonize space without a Weyland-Yutani
Welcome to Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and delivering an easily digestible nugget of their stories.
NASA wants to change the way we think about the habitable zone
"There are great possibilities in expanding the habitable zone beyond our traditional blinders on that vision where it's Earth or nothing." That's Cynthia Phillips, a planetary geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She's currently working on a mission to study Europa, one of Jupiter's icy moons with a subsurface ocean. Jupiter -- and, by association, Europa -- is well outside the "habitable zone," the gauge astronomers have used for years to determine whether a planet can sustain liquid water, a major precursor for life. But in Phillips' view, being outside of this zone doesn't automatically mean the moon or planet is devoid of life. At SXSW, Phillips and a panel of NASA scientists discussed how they're approaching the search for alien life within our own solar system and beyond -- and as it turns out, they're not necessarily looking for another Earth.
Cryptocurrency mining is hampering the search for alien life
It turns out that high-end graphics cards are fantastic for mining non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies, which has led to a global shortage of GPUs. Gamers are livid at the lack of supply, especially as prices skyrocket on secondary markets. But they're not the only ones with ruined dreams: The shortage has stalled plans to expand the search for alien life.
Researchers say aliens aren't causing Tabby’s Star to dim after all
Tabby's Star, also known as KIC 8462852, is quite a mystery. Located about 1,280 light-years from Earth, the star puts on an interesting light show every now and then, dimming and brightening at unpredictable times. While many theories have been put forward as to what could be causing the changes in brightness, -- which can dip by up to 22 percent -- theories that include an alien megastructure, researchers haven't been able to get any solid data to explain the phenomenon. However, Louisiana State University researcher Tabetha Boyajian, who the star is named after, launched a Kickstarter campaign in May of 2016 with the goal of raising funds for a long-term observation of the star. The funds were raised and a new paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters presents the work of over 200 researchers who observed the star from 2015 through last year.
SpaceX Falcon 9 launch leaves a creepy cloud over LA
It seems like everyone in southern California is looking up and asking "what is that?" this evening, and after revelations earlier this week about government investigations into unidentified flying objects, UFO is a popular answer. In truth, the trails were left by a SpaceX launch in the last hour from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara, CA. You can watch a live video feed of the launch below.
Pentagon funded UFO identification program for 5 years
Recent UFO research isn't just the work of the X-Files or former pop punk stars. The New York Times has learned that the US Department of Defense quietly funded a program (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification) designed to explain UFO reports. The program was initially funded in 2007 at the behest of Senator Harry Reid, and sent most of its money ($22 million per year) went to an aerospace firm run by his friend Robert Bigelow, who's "absolutely convinced" UFOs have visited Earth and has been making inflatable habitats for NASA. The money stopped flowing in 2012, but the program is technically active to this day.
‘Dinner Party’ relives an interracial couple’s alien abduction in VR
On the night of September 19th, 1961, Barney and Betty Hill were the victims of the first widely publicized alien abduction in US history. The Hills, an interracial couple active in the civil-rights movement, were on their way home from a trip to Niagara Falls when they noticed an unusual light in the sky. Shaken by the erratic behavior of the UFO, they headed in the direction of the closest town but never made it.
