Retired United States Air Force Maj. Gen. William “Neil” McCasland went missing on February 27 after leaving his Albuquerque home on foot around 11 a.m. Given his links to the UFO research community, ...

In last week’s The Universe column, I fielded a reader’s question about galaxy collisions in an expanding universe. The answer deals with vast distances, inscrutable forces and the ultimate fate of ...

We often assume mathematics is the one language every intelligent species must share. But while physical laws may be universal, the way minds describe and reason about those laws can vary dramatically ...

Studying how honeybees process information may help humans communicate with aliens, according to a new thought experiment. Although the ancestors of honeybees and humans diverged in evolution more ...

Humans have always been fascinated with space. We frequently question whether we are alone in the Universe. If not, what does intelligent life look like? And how would aliens communicate? How could ...

Nine movies in, assumptions start to pile up like a precarious Jenga tower that every ounce of originality’s been squeezed out of the lucrative “Alien” franchise Ridley Scott erected. Just burn that ...

The alien angle aside, if you've just finished yet another binge of The X-Files and were looking for a show about government agents that feels like something of a spiritual successor, then there is ...

First proposed in 2012, the Inter-universal Teichmüller Theory (IUT) is a devilishly difficult math theory that experts describe as an “alien language.” Although only a few mathematicians around the ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...