The first unmistakable signal from another intelligence may not be a cheerful greeting. A growing group of researchers is arguing that our inaugural contact is more likely to be a distress call, the ...

The unsettling logic behind a “last message” universe The idea that our first confirmed alien signal might be a civilization’s final broadcast is rooted less in pessimism than in probability. If ...

Behind the acid blood and jump scares of the Alien franchise is an even more insidious horror: a single employer with ...

Here’s another example: the alien Message in Stanislaw Lem’s His Master’s Voice. It contains instructions for making a substance. When scientists make it, it looks quasi-biological, like protoplasm, ...