1. Astronomers Margaret Turnbull and Jill Tarter of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., have compiled a list of 17,129 nearby stars most likely to have planets that could support complex life.
  2. According to Turnbull, stars must be at least 3 billion years old (to allow life time to evolve), have low mass, and have high levels of iron; metals are needed to form rocky, Earthlike planets.
  3. Leading the list is Epsilon Indi A, a dim orange star just 11.8 light-years away, in our local corner of the Milky Way.
  4. What’s the frequency, Frank? Astronomer Frank Drake made the first scientific attempt to contact alien beings in 1960, when he used an 85-foot radio dish at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia to listen for signals from two nearby sunlike stars.
  5. You haven’t heard about it because his search turned up zilch.

Read 15 more Things You Didn’t Know About… Aliens @ Discover Magazine >>>