Archive for the ‘alien life’ category: Page 133
Apr 12, 2016
How Self-Replicating Spacecraft Could Take Over the Galaxy
Posted by Andreas Matt in categories: alien life, robotics/AI, space travel
Forget about generation ships, suspended animation, or the sudden appearance of a worm hole. The most likely way for aliens to visit us — whatever their motive — is by sending robotic probes. Here’s how swarms of self-replicating spacecraft could someday rule the galaxy.
Top image by Alejandro Burdisio via Concept Ships.
Back in late 1940’s the Hungarian mathematician John Von Neumann wondered if it might be possible to design a non-biological system that could replicate itself in a cellular automata environment, what he called a universal constructor. Von Neumann wasn’t thinking about space exploration at the time, but other thinkers like Freeman Dyson, Eric Drexler, Ralph Merkle, and Robert Freitas later took his idea and applied it to exactly that.
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Apr 12, 2016
NASA reveals winning concepts to explore alien worlds
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: alien life, space travel
As the third most abundant element in the universe, oxygen is both abundant and the best element in the periodic table from which to produce energy for metabolism. That’s one reason planetary scientist David Catling argues that E.T. would also breathe oxygen; as noted in this article blast from the past.
What are the odds that visiting space aliens could simply walk off their craft and start breathing our own oxygen-rich atmosphere?
Better than is generally appreciated; even among some astrobiologists.
Apr 8, 2016
Researchers find that ribose, the ‘R’ in RNA, could form naturally in space
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: alien life
Though the quest to find water on distant planets is the most talked-about way that researchers are looking for extraterrestrial life, one of our best bets at understanding life’s complexities lies with comets, not planets.
In fact, the icy space balls are already known to form amino acids and nucleobases, two key substances needed for life to take root. And now, researchers may have found another necessary ingredient: ribose, the ‘R’ in RNA.
Before we dive into the new discovery, it’s important to understand what life, as we know it, needs to get started, and how we think it may have happened here on Earth. Life on Earth requires three macromolecules: RNA, DNA and proteins. The current understanding is that RNA, or ribonucleic acid, came before DNA on Earth.
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Apr 7, 2016
Why E.T. Will Need Customer Service
Posted by Bruce Dorminey in categories: alien life, food, transportation
If history is a guide, trade may be widespread among space-voyaging civilizations throughout the galaxy. Cultures that hate each other, still find common ground across a bartering table — as noted in this article blast from the past. #SETI
Sitting in the waiting room of my local auto repair, I honestly began to wonder if on some other far-flung planet, pointy-eared aliens would be listening for someone to sing out that they, too, were “Good to Go.”
Or, to them, would the sort of back and forth banter that we all take for granted in day-to-day business here on Earth seem as alien as ice cream? Would a highly-advanced civilization circling another sunlike star even need this sort of social lubricant?
Apr 6, 2016
Do Aliens Exist? Here’s What Scientists Say About Life on Other Planets
Posted by Sean Brazell in category: alien life
Kind of a light-hearted end of week meditation on what questions we might first pose to an extraterrestrial intelligence, if they were willing to sit for an interstellar town hall. Hope you enjoy.
If extraterrestrial (E.T.) intelligent civilizations are out there, given the age of the cosmos they stand a chance of being millions, or even billions of years ahead of us in almost every way. Assuming that we were even able to start a cosmic dialogue with them, I’ve often wondered what humanity should first ask such an advanced civilization.
Here are five sample questions:
Mar 31, 2016
Astronomers Can’t Rule Out Alien Megastructure Around Kepler Star
Posted by Bruce Dorminey in category: alien life
Too soon to say whether Tabby’s Star, the Kepler star that garnered all the headlines late last year, actually harbors an alien megastructure or not. A new crowdfunding effort to fund global network of observations for the next two to three years should help resolve the matter. Don’t hold your breath.
Astronomers still can’t rule out the presence of an alien megastructure around Kepler star KIC 8462852 — located nearly 1500 light years away in the constellation of Cygnus. Strange dips in the star’s luminosity over four years of observations with NASA’s Kepler space telescope initially fueled such speculation, even though most of it was quickly dismissed.
But the currently most favored natural explanation for the strange light curves — a swarm of intervening planetary or cometary debris — remains largely unsatisfying. Thus, next month, a Kickstarter campaign will fund new ground-based observations to begin this summer that should bring more clarity to the situation.
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Mar 28, 2016
Alien Technology –“Might Be a Billion Years Old and Not Made of Matter” (Weekend Feature)
Posted by Andreas Matt in category: alien life
The author of “Alien Minds”, Susan Schneider of the University of Pennsylvania, has proposed a “greater age of alien civilizations” argument that says that “if extraterrestrial civilizations are millions or billions of years older than us, many would be vastly more intelligent than we are. By our standards, many would be superintelligent. We are galactic babies.”
