Are aliens running out of places to hide? It turns out we've searched much more of the galaxy than we realized
August 5, 2026
When people grow impatient at the lack of success in the search for alien life, researchers often point to how few of the Milky Way’s 100 billion stars or so have been searched so far. But it may be that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has surveyed more stars than astronomers had realized.
Louisa Mason, a PhD student at the University of Manchester, had a recent epiphany…