For decades, astronomers have been searching the skies for a sign that we are not alone in the universe. Today, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute spearheads this ...

For more than 60 years, scientists have been searching the cosmos for possible signs of radio transmission that would indicate the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). In that time, the ...

Nearly four years ago, a tiny optical observatory in a remote Sydney suburb created a minor news flap after potentially detecting an intelligent laser signal from the direction of 47 Tucanae --- a ...

The best way to find laser flashes from an alien civilization is to look everywhere, all the time, and a new project aims to do just that. The SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute ...

The Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) focuses mainly on looking for radio signals from civilizations elsewhere in the galaxy, but the SETI Institute is taking a new approach – and it ...

The SETI@home project, a distributed computing effort that has been using idle PC capacity to search for signs of extraterrestrial life, did manage to find something recently: a missing laptop. James ...

Imagine that you live alone in a dark, hilly wood that stretches for miles in all directions. You know your own forest well, having hiked and surveyed it as far as your feet and your tools allow. In ...

In August, Russian astronomers announced that they had detected a blast of radio waves coming from the direction of the star HD164595, 94 light years away. Maybe, they said, the blast came from aliens ...

E.T., you can phone home again. Forty-two radio telescope dishes near Mount Shasta will again start listening for sounds of intelligent life in the universe this fall after donors — including actress ...

It's always nice to feel useful, even if not much comes of it in the end. The millions of people who, over the past two decades, donated their home computers' processing power to the SETI@home search ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I cover the history of science and exploration. SETI@Home gave rise to an active online community of volunteers and enthusaists.