Double Jeopardy with False Positives? And how this Relates to the Search for Extraterrestrial Life.
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Continue reading “How False Positives Impact the Search for Extraterrestrial Life” »
A prime target in the search for extraterrestrial life is Europa, a moon of Jupiter that’s covered with a sheet of salty ice. But what kind of salt is there? Researchers say they’ve created a new kind of salt crystal that could fill the bill, and perhaps raise hopes for finding life under the ice.
This salt crystal is both exotic and common: It’s actually table salt — also known as sodium chloride, with the chemical formula NaCl — but bound up with water molecules to form a hydrate that doesn’t exist naturally on Earth.
Andrew Strominger is a theoretical physicist at Harvard. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Andrew’s website: https://www.physics.harvard.edu/people/facpages/strominger.
Andrew’s papers:
Soft Hair on Black Holes: https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.00921
Photon Rings Around Warped Black Holes: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.
But with so many signals that could happen, how can scientists possibly sift through all of them to try to find a possible alien transmission?
Well, it turns out, scientists found the answer: Don’t. Instead, let AI do it for you.
That’s exactly what the researchers behind this study did, utilizing an AI algorithm to look through signals from a designated 820 different star systems. These targets were made from the Hipparcos catalogue, a collection of data from 118,200 stars made by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hipparcos satellite, and totaled over 480 hours of data.
While Venus has long been ignored as a potential home for alien existence, MIT researchers say that the skies of Venus may be hosting aerial extraterrestrial life.
Phosphine Found
Continue reading “Life on Venus? Planet’s Clouds Could Host Extraterrestrial Intelligence” »
It actually makes a lot of sense from a computing standpoint.
If life is common in our Universe, and we have every reason to suspect it is, why do we not see evidence of it everywhere?
This is the essence of the Fermi Paradox, a question that has plagued astronomers and cosmologists almost since the birth of modern astronomy.
Continue reading “Alien Civilizations Could Use Black Holes as Massive Quantum Computers” »
NASA is building spacecraft parts that look alien. In a way, they are because it is a generative manufacturing AI that is the designer.
Scientists at Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are attempting to establish a doorway to a parallel reality. The goal of the project is to depict a world that is nearly comparable to ours and where life is mirrored. The experiment’s leader, Leah Broussard, told NBC that the strategy is a little crazy, but it will completely transform the game. If the studies are successful, particles will be able to morph into images of themselves, allowing them to burrow through a solid wall. This might demonstrate that the cosmos we observe is merely half of what exists. Broussard revealed that he believes the test will yield a result of zero.
The habitable zone is the region around a star where an orbiting planet could host liquid water and, therefore, possibly support life.
The habitable zone is also known as the “Goldilocks zone” because planets orbiting at that “just right” distance from a star are not too hot or too cold to host liquid water. If planets are closer to their star, the water turns to steam; if they’re farther, it freezes.
A new paper has proposed an absolutely wild idea. What if aliens are creating black holes to use as quantum storage? It sounds crazy, but some scientists say it could give us a solution to the Fermi Paradox, which essentially states that if life is common in our universe, why have we not found evidence of it beyond Earth?
This paradox has caused quite a few ripples throughout the scientific community, especially within parts that believe alien life is out there, just waiting to be discovered. The new paper has yet to be peer-reviewed, but it was created by a team of German and Georgian scientists who say we may be looking in the wrong direction in our search for alien life.
Currently, we rely on radio signals to search for signs of life out in the universe. But, these researchers suggest that we should instead approach black holes as if alien civilizations created them as massive quantum computers to store data in. As such, we should be looking for technosignatures emanating from megastructures like pulsars, white dwarf stars, and black holes.
