The first unmistakable signal from another intelligence would rank alongside fire and writing in the story of our species, ...

What would happen if aliens contacted us? It's a longstanding question that now has at least a partial answer after a transmission designed to mimic correspondence from an extraterrestrial ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Credit: Ken and Keli Chaffin A father-daughter team has decoded a mock "alien" message after a ...

One of the most famous messages ever beamed to space was a string of 1,679 bits sent by the Arecibo radio telescope in 1974. But if E.T. sent us such a string, how could we Earthlings even begin to ...

For decades, storytellers have been imagining what it might be like when humanity first makes contact with an alien intelligence. In 1998, author Ted Chiang delivered the novella “Story of Your Life,” ...

What if aliens in the universe send a message to Earth, and we can’t understand what they’re saying? Communicating with another species is likely to be tricky, given how difficult it already is for ...