Archive for the ‘alien life’ category: Page 131
Apr 16, 2016
Micro spaceships powered by lasers to search for alien life
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: alien life, computing, internet, mobile phones, robotics/AI, space travel
Microscopic spaceships powered by Earth-based lasers are being developed to hunt for extra-terrestrial life in Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to ours.
The £70m Breakthrough Starshot concept involves creating a tiny robotic spacecraft, no larger than a mobile phone chip, which would carry cameras, thrusters, a power supply and navigation and communication equipment.
Physicist Stephen Hawking, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Russian internet billionaire Yuri Milner have all joined the project’s board giving it major backing.
Apr 13, 2016
Aliens may have already swung by Earth without us even noticing
Posted by Sean Brazell in category: alien life
Avi Loeb and Ann Druyan just proposed an unsettling idea as to why we haven’t yet found extraterrestrial life.
“Where is everybody?” So wondered the great physicist Enrico Fermi. The Universe is vast and ancient. Life, he reasoned, has had plenty of time to get started – and get smart. But we see no evidence of life or intelligence beyond Earth.
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
Future space missions, including the journey to Mars, edge closer to reality as NASA reveals its top picks from a series of competitions designed to crowdsource innovative concepts.
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.
Continue reading “Researchers find that ribose, the ‘R’ in RNA, could form naturally in space” »
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?