The discovery of extraterrestrial life can be classified as a low probability, high impact event. Since we don’t have any empirical data to help us assess the consequences of ET contact, governments are largely unequipped to deal with the potential hazards it could pose. In recognition of the impact that such an event would have on society, a...

Discovery of the first extrasolar planet potentially capable of harboring life was announced today by NASA and the Kepler telescope team. The planet, unassumingly dubbed Kepler 22-b, orbits within the habitable zone of its host star, about 15% closer than the Earth orbits our sun. Consequently, astronomers have estimated that its surface temperature...

Enrico Fermi was a physicist working at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1950s. Following a discussion about extraterrestrial intelligence with colleagues, he apocryphally posed the question, ‘Where are they?’. By which he meant that it seemed impossible, if life existed elsewhere in the universe, that we had not yet seen evidence of it given...