Alien life news, articles and features | New Scientist

The one film to watch before seeing Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day

Bethan Ackerley — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:30:56 +0000

With Steven Spielberg’s new extraterrestrial film Disclosure Day just out, it’s the ideal time to watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind – perhaps the perfect UFO film, says film columnist Bethan Ackerley

The distant world that is our best hope of finding alien life

Leah Crane — Tue, 19 May 2026 15:00:41 +0000

US government releases huge batch of UFO files

Leah Crane — Fri, 08 May 2026 17:33:13 +0000

Archival imagery from the Apollo 17 mission to the moon. The yellow box contains an enlarged area of the original photo in which three lights are visible above the lunar terrain

US Department of Defense

The US Department of Defense (DoD) released a trove of files on UFOs. The files include images along with government documents and correspondence, some of which were classified until now. “These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation – and it’s time the American people see it for themselves,” said US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in a statement on where the files are displayed.

Read more

The mathematician who doesn’t exist

The images are mostly photographs taken by members of the US military showing small dots or indistinct shapes in the sky. Of more interest are the hundreds of pages of files relating to UFOs, also called unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), from the FBI, Air Force and various other government departments. Many of the pages are correspondence between the government and concerned members of the public. Some are pamphlets from special-interest groups such as the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America or the Fraternity of Cosmic Sons and Daughters, and others are requests from children to the head of the FBI – many to J. Edgar Hoover, who served in the role from 1935 to 1972 – for help with school projects. Letters from UFO enthusiasts through the years, from the 1940s to now, show remarkable similarities in the sentiments they express: a feeling that UFO sightings have been mounting, that the government must be hiding something and that they are sure to be persecuted for saying as much.

Infrared still image captured of unidentified object over the western US in December 2025

US Department of Defense

The responses to these letters, and the internal government communications that have been released, seem to show something different – many thousands of reports of UFO sightings have been taken seriously and investigated, and there has been no indication that any of them have been extraterrestrial. This mirrors the 2023 results from NASA’s task force on UAPs, which found that normal aircraft and weather phenomena account for most reports, with only a few remaining unexplained due to blurry images and low-quality data. The documents that have made the biggest splash are images and transcripts from NASA’s Gemini 7, Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 missions, each referencing some bright lights that the astronauts saw in space and could not explain. Most of these sightings have already been investigated and explained as micrometeoroid impacts on the moon or the spacecraft, bits of floating debris, and camera or film defects, although a few have remained unexplained thus far. The DoD has opened a new investigation into the images that remain unexplained, and has been directed by the administration of President Donald Trump to “conduct separate reporting” on any unresolved UAP cases. According to the website, this is only the first of many rolling document drops expected “every few weeks” as more files are found and declassified.

SETI may have missed alien signals because of space weather

Matthew Sparkes — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 11:26:50 +0000

SETI has spent decades listening for a sharp, well-defined radio signal that could indicate it was sent by distant intelligent life. Now researchers believe that space weather could distort and blur such signals – meaning SETI has been scanning for the wrong thing

Chemistry clues could detect aliens unlike any life on Earth

Alex Wilkins — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 18:00:42 +0000

Looking for molecular evidence of life on other worlds is tricky, but a test based on the reactivity of carbon compounds could be a useful indicator

Would aliens do physics, or is science a human invention?

Daniel Whiteson — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 09:00:18 +0000

Shaped by a different biology or culture, other intelligent civilisations – if they’re out there – might understand the universe in a completely different way than we do. Physicist Daniel Whiteson explores what that could tell us about physics and ourselves

Search for radio signals finds no hint of alien civilisation on K2-18b

Alex Wilkins — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 09:00:38 +0000

Planet K2-18b, an apparent water world 124 light years away, has been seen as a promising location in the search for aliens, but telescopes on Earth failed to pick up any radio transmissions

Was 2025 the year we found signs of past life on Mars?

Leah Crane — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 11:00:39 +0000

Tantalising signs of past microbial life showed up on Mars this year, but to truly know whether they contain the answer to the biggest question in the universe, we will need to bring samples back to Earth

The essential guide to proving we’ve found alien life

Miriam Frankel — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 16:00:37 +0000

From mudstones on Mars to strange gases in exoplanet atmospheres, tentative evidence for extraterrestrial life is starting to come thick and fast. But when we've found it, how will we know for sure?

Hopes of finding aliens were raised in 2025 – but quickly faded

Alex Wilkins — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 11:00:48 +0000

Astronomers thought they had seen the "first hints of life on an alien world" this year, but they disappeared under closer scrutiny