SETI Researchers Double-Checked 1 Million Objects for Signs of Alien Signals

We can’t help ourselves but wonder about life elsewhere in the Universe. Any hint of a biosignature or even a faint, technosignature-like event wrests our attention away from our tumultuous daily affairs. In 1984, our wistful quest took concrete form as SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, SETI has turned up … Read more

Here’s How Interstellar Objects and Rogue Planets Can be Trapped in the Solar System

When Oumuamua traversed our Solar System in 2017 it was the first confirmed Interstellar Object (ISO) to do so. Then in 2019, Comet 2l/Borisov did the same thing. These are the only two confirmed ISOs to visit our Solar System. Many more ISOs must have visited in our Solar System’s long history, and many more … Read more

A look back at NEOWISE, the NASA mission that cataloged objects around Earth for over a decade

WISE, NEOWISE’s predecessor mission, imaged the entire sky in the mid-infrared range. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech/UCLA The NASA project NEOWISE, which has given astronomers a detailed view of near-Earth objects – some of which could strike the Earth – ended its mission and burned on re-entering the atmosphere after over a decade. On a clear night, the … Read more