Column Space

Self-destructive civilizations may doom our search for alien intelligence

A lack of signals from space may also be bad news for Earthlings

By Tom Siegfried

Contributing Correspondent

- More than 2 years ago

satellite dishes of the allen telescope array

The Allen Telescope Array, in Northern California, searches for signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos. A recent paper offers new estimates for the number of civilizations out there.

Seth Shostak/SETI Institute

On Earth, civilizations have limited lifetimes.