2025 Was The Year Humanity Got Closer Than Ever To Finding Alien Life

Is there other life out there? “Pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space 'Cause it's bugger all down here on Earth,” sang Monty Python. We do not know if there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and we do not know if there is any other life beyond Earth. However, this last year, we got some intriguing hints and some exciting new plans for future missions. At the same time, conspiracy theories were cranked up to 11, so some really important advancements in the field were lost in the noise.

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When it comes to finding alien life, NASA has created a Confidence of Life Detection (CoLD) scale. The first step is detecting a possible signal. The next three steps are ruling out contamination, making sure that the biology is possible, and ruling out a non-biological explanation. Then there is additional independent evidence, ruling out other hypotheses, and finally, independent confirmation.

In the many decades of NASA exploration, there has only been one detection that got on that scale. It was collected by the Perseverance Rover in 2024, and it is known as the Bright Angel formation. Among the portions of it, there is the now famous "Cheyava Falls" rock, one called “Apollo Temple”, and another called “Sapphire Canyon”.

A paper this year has found iron phosphate and sulfides, as well as organic carbon materials clusters in specific regions of the mudstone, which formed in the presence of water. The team found that the Bright Angel formation contains organic signatures, textures, chemical, and mineral characteristics that warrant consideration as ‘potential biosignatures’. Maybe there was life on Mars.

The building blocks of living organisms, such as amino acids, nucleic bases, and sugars, have been found in so many space environments. This year, we found a never-before-seen amino acid in space, on asteroid Bennu, as well as many intriguing molecules on interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS.

In terms of controversial discoveries, we need to look at exoplanets. Well, one in particular: planet K2-18b. The world is larger than Earth and rich in water. In April, a team claimed that this exoplanet possessed biosignatures in its atmosphere. Later in the year, a different team claimed that there was no signature, but definitely the world was rich in water.

As humanity gets better at studying exoplanets and their atmospheres, we might find some molecules that warrant putting that distant world on the CoLD. Not yet, though. If we consider the more traditional radio astronomy methods, things are also interesting. 

Research this summer suggested that if aliens have a Square Kilometer Array Observatory, like the one being built in South Africa and Australia, they could find us due to our leaking radio signals. Aliens up to 200 light-years would spot the signals from airport radars. Of course, the signal has not travelled that far.

In the search for alien intelligent life, one recent proposal expects the aliens to be "loud!" The Eschatian Hypothesis puts forward the idea that first contact will be a more extreme and more unusual event than the subsequent ones. 

To finish on the absurd claim, let’s go back to interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. The third only known interstellar visitor has always looked and acted like a comet, since its discovery on July 1. As it got closer to the Sun, it got even more comet-y, and yet the believers thought it was an alien spacecraft pretending to be a comet. In the end, it is such a comet that even one of the big proponents of the alien conspiracy theory had to admit that it is a natural object.

The year might not have brought an answer to the question of whether we are alone in the universe, but it has gotten us a little closer, at least we hope. It has definitely brought closer a few more exciting projects. The European Space Agency’s Rosalyn Franklin rover will fly to Mars in 2028 and will dig underground to look for life signatures. And ESA has started planning a mission to Enceladus, the icy moon of Saturn, a prime candidate for extant life in the solar system.

We started with pop culture, and we can end with pop culture. The truth is out there; we just have to go look for it.