What if we spend decades building advanced telescopes to search for life on other planets and come up emptyhanded? A recent study led by ETH Zurich researchers including corresponding author and SETI Institute affiliate, Dr. Daniel Angerhausen, tackled this question, exploring what we can learn about life in the universe—even if we don’t detect signs of life or habitability. Using advanced statistical modeling, the research team sought to explore how many exoplanets scientists should observe and understand before declaring that life beyond Earth is either common or rare.

“Even a single positive detection would change everything—but until then, we need to make sure we’re learning as much as possible from what we don’t find,” said Angerhausen.

What if humanity's search for life on other planets returns no hits? An international team of researchers, led by ETH Zurich's Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics studied what insights can be gained from a 'no life detected' scenario in future exoplanet surveys.

This paper reports the discovery of a high-velocity star J07 ejected from globular cluster M15 approximately 21 million years ago, providing strong evidence for the presence of an IMBH constrained to within a few AU of the central region of M15.