When ET phones, don’t pick up. Scientists have outlined a set of protocols for responding to extraterrestrial contact, including a bizarre directive to refrain from answering cosmic correspondence. Adopted by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA),

New SETI protocols outline how scientists should verify, share, and respond to potential evidence of alien intelligence in the modern information age.

If and when SETI discovers alien life, a revised Declaration of Principles guarantees once the discovery has been verified, its disclosure will come soon after.

The IAA SETI Committee has updated rules for evaluating and revealing the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence.

The SETI Institute is the latest to confirm what scientists have long suspected: the interstellar 3I/ATLAS comet is not an alien spaceship.

Explore the world of UFOs from all angles with these books covering the history, sociology and weirder takes on the phenomenon.

It may seem like we are on the verge of discovering alien life. In 2025, a press release stated that we have the "strongest hints yet" of extraterrestrial life on the exoplanet K2-18b. And when talking about a collected sample from a rock named "Cheyava Falls" on Mars,

The moment of first contact with extraterrestrials is a staple of science fiction. It usually involves a frantic scientist having a Eureka moment, realising in a single dramatic instant that Earth is being visited by creatures from light-years away.