UPDATE May 17, 2017: The IBM PowerAI team and Nimbix have recently announced support for the hackathon. Teams at the hackathon will enjoy access to PowerAI systems for the weekend, which will significantly improve deep learning model building for ET signal classification. Thanks, Nimbix and IBM PowerAI.
As the Fermi paradox states, the Universe is a vast, unknowable space, filled with trillions upon trillions of potentially habitable planets, so… where are all the aliens?
In the latest attempt to solve this conundrum, a trio of researchers have suggested that advanced alien civilisations have gone into self-imposed ‘hibernation’ — waiting for a future where the Universe is far colder than it is now, which would facilitate the kind of processing power we could only ever dream about.
A new paper written by Oxford neuroscientist and AI expert, Anders Sandberg and Stuart Armstrong, together with Milan Ćirković from the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade, Serbia, argues that civilisations far more advanced than us could have conceivably explored a big chunk of the Universe already, and are now waiting for a better time to be alive.
On a geopolitical level, science is also a crucial agent of soft power between nations. Going back decades, scientific collaborations have tempered tensions between Russia and its rival nations, and allowed cooler heads to prevail. In 1975, astronaut Thomas Stafford and cosmonaut Alexey Leonov shook hands in space as part of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, which reflected the policy of détente, or easing of strained relations, between the US and the USSR. The International Space Station (ISS), the crown jewel of science partnerships, is directly descended from this symbolic gesture.
I took a five-day tour of Russia’s leading scientific research centers. This is what I saw.
They call them the “golden brains.” Perched 22 storeys high, they engulf the top floors of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) headquarters in southwest Moscow. Somehow both geometric and wildly rampageous, the copper and aluminum sculptures look like the kind of long-lost technologies that protagonists stumble across on deserted alien worlds in Mass Effect.
We have reached a turning point in society. According to renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, the next 100 years of science will determine whether we perish or thrive. Will we remain a Type 0 civilization, or will we advance and make our way into the stars?
Experts assert that, as a civilization grows larger and becomes more advanced, its energy demands will increase rapidly due to its population growth and the energy requirements of its various machines. With this in mind, the Kardashev scale was developed as a way of measuring a civilization’s technological advancement based upon how much usable energy it has at its disposal (this was originally just tied to energy available for communications, but has since been expanded).
The scale was originally designed in 1964 by the Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev (who was looking for signs of extraterrestrial life within cosmic signals). It has 3 base classes, each with an energy disposal level: Type I (10¹⁶W), Type II (10²⁶W), and Type III (10³⁶W). Other astronomers have extended the scale to Type IV (10⁴⁶W) and Type V (the energy available to this kind of civilization would equal that of all energy available in not just our universe, but in all universes and in all time-lines). These additions consider both energy access as well as the amount of knowledge the civilizations have access to.
My theory, alien life will either be nearly impossible to find and we will spend centuries just looking for microbes. Or aliens will turn out to be so common that they could care less who we are and where we came from, and we will just be a new backwards species that turns up at the alien bar.
The world was electrified last year when it was suggested that scientists had spotted an “alien megastructure” orbiting a distant star.
Now a space boffin has suggested huge extraterrestrial constructions could be relatively easy to spot, so long as we look in the right place using the correct tools.
In 2016, one expert suggested the unexplained “winking” behaviour of a far-off sun called Tabby’s Star may have been caused by the rotation of a gigantic craft called a Dyson’s Sphere.
Exoplanet Proxima B, which was recently discovered orbiting our closest neighbouring star, may have the potential to support life, new climate simulations have revealed.
Ever since it was identified in August 2016, Proxima B, which stands 4.2 light years away from Earth and close to the Proxima Centauri star, has intrigued scientists. The tantalising prospect that the planet could be habitable has led many to undertake in-depth investigations.
Trending: Who is David Nabarro, the UK candidate to lead the World Health Organisation?
A team of astronomers is set to build a new exoplanet hunter. In theory, this instrument could lead to finding the first truly habitable world beyond Earth.
NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have selected a team of astronomers to build their new exoplanet hunter. In order to get the best minds on the job, the scientists were selected after holding a national competition. The resulting team will be led by Penn State University assistant professor Suvrath Mahadevan.
