Toggle light / dark theme

Interesting…


The SETI concepts now called ‘Dysonian’ are to my mind some of the most exhilarating ideas in the field. Dysonian SETI gets its name from the ‘Dyson spheres’ and ‘Dyson swarms’ analyzed by Freeman Dyson in a 1960 paper. This is a technology that an advanced civilization might use to harvest the energy of its star. You can see how this plays off Nikolai Kardashev’s classification of civilizations; Kardashev suggested that energy use is a way to describe civilizations at the broadest level. A Type II society is one that can use all the energy of its star.

In the film 2010, director Peter Hyams’ 1984 adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2010: Odyssey Two (Del Rey, 1982), we see an instance of this kind of technology at work, though it has nothing to do with a Dyson sphere. In the film, a dark patch appearing on Jupiter signals the onset of what Martyn Fogg has called ‘stellification,’ the conversion of a gas giant into a small star. Rapidly replicating von Neumann machines — the famous monoliths — increase Jupiter’s density enroute to triggering nuclear fusion.

A new star is born, with consequences entertainingly explored in the novel’s epilogue. Without monoliths to work with, Fogg described another way of triggering a gas giant’s fusion reaction in a 1989 paper. A small black hole could be put into orbit around the planet, its orbit gradually sinking toward the planetary center. Accretion will eventually cause the new star to shine like a red dwarf, its brightness steadily increasing over a 50 million year period. Parts of the Jovian satellite system could be rendered continuously habitable over a period of about 100 million years, even as the star-builders exploit its energies via orbiting power stations.

Read more

Announcing the discovery of over 100 new exoplanets identified by the Kepler space telescope, NASA has highlighted four planets, potentially rocky bodies, two of which may be capable of supporting life, orbiting a distant star.

Located 181 light years from Earth, in the Aquarius constellation, K2-72 is a red dwarf. NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler satellite has found four bodies orbiting the distant star which, given their size, are likely rocky bodies similar to our own planet.

At left, in optical light, UGC 1382 appears to be a simple elliptical galaxy. But spiral arms emerged when astronomers incorporated ultraviolet and deep optical data (middle). Combining that with a view of low-density hydrogen gas (shown in green at right), scientists discovered that UGC 1382 is gigantic.

Read more

By Shannon Hall

It’s a cosmic game of hide-and-seek. A team of astronomers say that the next search for advanced extraterrestrial civilisations should look for stars – or even galaxies – that have vanished without a trace, as anything so unexplainable could only be due to life far more intelligent than us.

Beatriz Villarroel at Uppsala University in Sweden says this crazy idea has been gnawing at her since her first year of graduate studies. Now she and two undergraduates have finally taken the plunge. They scoured multiple surveys of the night’s sky by eye in order to see if any of nearly 300,000 light sources disappeared from one survey to the next.

Read more

* * * Winner the VFX Japan Award 2013.
* * * Winner of the Special Jury Prize, Asian Film Festival Dallas.

Love Like Aliens 3D animated short produced in Tokyo, Japan.

Created by entertainment industry veteran and filmmaker Rashad Haughton, six and half minute animated short brings to life the iconic works of legendary artist and gynoid creator Sorayama Hajime in a way never before seen in film.

In a future not too far from now, humanity has advanced to a point where the line between Homo Sapiens and Androids have blurred completely. This has occurred so that the species could survive. Technology has allowed humans to travel into deep space to colonize other planets and galaxies deep in the universe because Earth has become uninhabitable. One of the many unfortunate results of this robotic Darwinism is that human behavior and consciousness has also changed over the years. Much of what makes one human — love, family, intimacy etc., have all become things of the past. Almost legend…

See more: http://wonderstanding.tv/

* * *

The new “Independence Day” is likely to be a popcorn-chomper, but it does provide us with some serious food for thought. We need to take a page from our former secretary of defense’s playbook and start thinking about such ‘known-unknowns.’ Eg., we need to take the development of interstellar propulsion much more seriously for a whole host of reasons.


As debris from an exploded mothership burned through Earth’s atmosphere, many audiences likely left the 1996 film “Independence Day” wondering when the rest of this ugly, stinking group of fictional extraterrestrials would return for a sequel? The answer lies in “Resurgence,” Roland Emmerich’s new blockbuster about locust-like space aliens that appear hellbent on killing off earth-like civilizations.

Read more

Good news alien hunters! A Kickstarter to fund a year-long investigation into KIC 8462852—the star voted most likely to harbor an advanced alien civilization—just got funded. Alien megastructure or not, we may finally get to the bottom of this bewildering, flickering star.

This crowdfunding campaign was set up in May by Yale astronomer Tabby Boyajian, and it managed to meet its $100,000 goal in just 30 days. A $10,000 surge in the last 100 minutes of the campaign managed to put the project over the top. The next step is to figure out the logistics, but Boyajian, who’s been leading the research into KIC 8462852, says observations could start as early as later this summer.

The ultimate goal of the project will be to determine why this star’s light dims at such irregular intervals, and at times by as much as 20 percent. These huge dips in luminosity are way too large to be a passing planet, hence the suspicion the anomaly is being caused by swarms of comets, a distorted star, some unknown astronomical phenomenon—or an advanced alien civilization in the process of building a gigantic solar array around the star.

Read more

Prior to the B2 bomber was released; many saw a black triangle object flying at dusk/ evening and no noise. Therefore, this article doesn’t surprise me because governments have to test their jets and other machines.


Just this week, Elon Musk said that he hopes to send people to Mars by 2024; now, Illinois residents are wondering if the black triangles they’re seeing in the sky are alien spacecraft or U.S. military technology. As The Verge reported, Musk announced his plans to ferry humanity to the red planet at the Code Conference on June 1. On May 22, an Illinois man reported seeing a black triangle craft in the sky at about 9:30 p.m.

Could the Illinois black triangle sighted in May (and the many other black triangle sightings that have occurred in the past) be related to plans to get humanity to Mars? Maybe.

Triangle UFO moves low over Illinois https://t.co/l1DkIyF7nS pic.twitter.com/kfTCx8Nzvu

Read more

Is it aliens? Sure sounds like aliens—but these strange, glowing patches over Pluto are actually something else (almost) as mysterious.

NASA’s New Horizons snapped this photo of sunlight streaming through Pluto’s haze haze during the spacecraft’s close approach on July 14, 2015. But, as researchers looked closer at the photo, a question emerged: Uh, what’s with that weird glowing patch in the upper right hand corner?

Read more