Lifeboat Foundation

Close friend and coworker Thomas Hertog explores the groundbreaking physicist’s theories regarding the Big Bang’s beginnings on this, the sixth anniversary of Stephen Hawking’s passing.

I was appointed as Stephen Hawking’s PhD student in 1998 “to work on a quantum theory of the Big Bang.” Over the course of about 20 years, what began as a doctoral project evolved into a close collaboration that came to an end only six years ago, on March 14, 2018, when he passed away.

The mystery that drove our investigation during this time was how the Big Bang could have produced conditions that were so ideal for life. How should we interpret this enigmatic display of intent?

Future science and technology will permit playing with the building blocks of space, time, matter, energy, and life, in ways that we could only call magic and supernatural today. Someday in the future, you and your loved ones will be resurrected by very advanced science and technology. Inconceivably advanced intelligences are out there among the stars. Even more God-like beings operate in the fabric of reality underneath spacetime, or beyond spacetime, and control the universe. Future science will allow us to find them, and become like them.

These claims are made on the opening page of the book \.

Scientists have discovered mysterious objects in space that could potentially be giant Dyson Spheres, structures built by advanced civilizations to harness the energy of their stars. This discovery is both exciting and poetic, as it represents humanity’s ongoing search for other intelligent life in the vast expanse of the Milky Way. While the objects have not yet been confirmed as Dyson Spheres, the possibility alone is enough to spark curiosity and wonder about the potential for other civilizations in our universe.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has progressed at an astounding pace over the last few years. Some scientists are now looking towards the development of artificial superintelligence (ASI) – a form of AI that would not only surpass human intelligence but would not be bound by the learning speeds of humans.

But what if this milestone isn’t just a remarkable achievement? What if it also represents a formidable bottleneck in the development of all civilizations, one so challenging that it thwarts their long-term survival?

This idea is at the heart of a research paper I recently published in Acta Astronautica. Could AI be the universe’s “great filter” – a threshold so hard to overcome that it prevents most life from evolving into space-faring civilizations?

An atmosphere is considered an essential trait for any possibility that a planet harbors life. But this “super-Earth” offers no hope for habitability.

Is there intelligent life somewhere in the cosmos? People have been debating this issue for centuries, if not millennia. However, with programs like SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) employing radio telescopes to actively listen for radio messages from alien civilizations, we’ve only recently had a real chance of finding out.

Should these searches be successful, what should we anticipate finding? I made this assumption during a talk at a conference for the SETI project Breakthrough Listen: it is highly unlikely to be little green men.

The find, simulated with computer modeling, might explain what happens to liquid water across the universe.

“Water is really important for life,” said Eryn Cangi, co-author and a research scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, in a press release. “We need to understand the conditions that support liquid water in the universe, and that may have produced the very dry state of Venus today.”

At one point, Venus might have hosted seas like Earth. So, what happened? The study’s scientists suspect that Venus underwent a powerful greenhouse event that raised temperatures to 900 degrees Fahrenheit. After this happened, all the planet’s water evaporated, leaving some droplets behind. Even the few drops that were left over might have vanished because of an ion, HCO+, in the planet’s atmosphere.

“Water is really important for life,” said Dr. Eryn Cangi. “We need to understand the conditions that support liquid water in the universe, and that may have produced the very dry state of Venus today.”

How did the planet Venus lose its water? This debate has rage on for some time and something a recent study published in Nature hopes to address as a team of researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder (UCB) and the University of Arizona (UoA) as they have potentially conducted a groundbreaking study that could help explain the processes responsible for making Venus the hellish world it is today, whereas scientists have long hypothesized that the second planet from the Sun was much more hospitable billions of years ago.

“Water is really important for life,” said Dr. Eryn Cangi, who is a research scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at UCB and a co-author of the study. “We need to understand the conditions that support liquid water in the universe, and that may have produced the very dry state of Venus today.”

Continue reading “Venus Unveiled: The Mystery of Water Loss Revealed” »

The Sun emitted a strong solar flare, peaking at 10:22 p.m. ET on May 2, 2024. NASA ’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the Sun constantly, captured an image of the event.

Solar flares are intense bursts of radiation emanating from the release of magnetic energy associated with sunspots. These flares are among the biggest explosive events in our solar system, visible primarily in the ultraviolet range.

Flares impact Earth in a variety of ways: they can disrupt the ionosphere and interfere with GPS navigation and radio communications. They are also responsible for auroras, the beautiful natural light displays often seen in high-latitude skies.