What does 60 years of silence tell us about the search for extraterrestrials?
Aliens are big in the news recently, fueled by congressional hearings about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), formally known as UFOs. But while the idea of aliens visiting Earth may be exciting, the better bet is still the idea that aliens might exist on distant worlds. We already know potentially habitable planets are common and intelligent life has arisen on at least one world, so why not many? But after 60 years of searching for evidence of extraterrestrials "out there," we've found nothing. So what does that tell us? Although it seems odd at first blush, an absence of evidence can tell us things about the universe. Given the fact that we have found no definitive technological radio signals from an alien civilization , we can't simply conclude that they don't exist. But a prolonged silence after decades of study does tell us something about the likelihood of aliens , or at least the chances of us finding them. That's the focus of a new study in...