If true, we started out as a “baby universe.” Cute.
Could our universe have been created in a petri dish? Avi Loeb seems to think so. The Harvard astronomer posits that a higher “class” of civilization may have conjured up our universe in a laboratory far, far away.
“Since our universe has a flat geometry with a zero net energy, an advanced civilization could have developed a technology that created a baby universe out of nothing through quantum tunneling,” Loeb writes in an op-ed published by Scientific American last year.
Could SpaceX be heading to Uranus next? The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine seems to think it should. The organization has released its latest decadal survey of planetary science and astrobiology. According to a report by Teslarati published on Wednesday, the survey hints that NASA should undertake a flagship mission to Uranus on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket.
The Uranus Orbiter and Probe
The mission is not entirely new. Called the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP), the proposal has been under work for several years by a team that includes scientists from NASA, the University of California, and Johns Hopkins University. Now, with SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, the researchers feel they have the technology to make their long-held dream a reality.
On April 1st this year, a team of scientists led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory posted a proposed new message to be sent to prospective intelligent extraterrestrials. The coincidence of April Fool’s Day in this case should be ignored. This actually is very real. The rationale for the message can be found in an article entitled, “A Beacon in the Galaxy: Updated Arecibo Message for Potential FAST and SETI Projects,” which has been submitted to the journal Galaxy and is currently posted on a pre-print server for review.
The article title includes the terms FAST and SETI. If you are not familiar with FAST, the acronym stands for the Five-Hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope being built in China (see picture above) that will be the largest parabolic radio telescope in the world and capable of intercepting the faintest radio signals from across the Universe. SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is far better known and was featured prominently in the science fiction movie, Contact, based on a Carl Sagan novel.
What kind of message is being sent? And how will intelligent aliens be able to decipher it? Since the first radios and television signals were broadcast, humanity has been streaming information into outer space with no thought of how the information would be perceived by an intelligent technically advanced civilization on the receiving end. And even before radios, sending a message to intelligent aliens was proposed. In the early 1800s an Austrian astronomer wanted to carve out a geometric pattern of trenches in the Sahara Desert, fill them with kerosene and then light it all up tobe a beacon for any aliens living nearby.
The brand new “Beacon in the Galaxy” is a binary message created by scientists as an update to the old Arecibo message.
The newly proposed “A Beacon in the Galaxy”, a binary message created by scientists as an update to the old Arecibo message, might actually be more dangerous for us than beneficial. It includes key information about us – our location, our DNA structure, and even an image of the naked human body.
Should we give aliens such vital details about Earth and humanity? This question has been around for ages and countless renowned scientists have expressed their concerns in the past. Even Stephen Hawking explained that a hypothetical alien civilization could be hostile.
Is the Beacon in the Galaxy better than the Arecibo message?
While the old radio signal included important information about Earth and humanity, it was more like a postcard with difficult-to-understand images. The new “Beacon in the Galaxy” message was created like a presentation with complex illustrations and explanations.
►Is faster-than-light (FTL) travel possible? In most discussions of this, we get hung up on the physics of particular ideas, such as wormholes or warp drives. But today, we take a more zoomed out approach that addresses all FTL propulsion — as well as FTL messaging. Because it turns out that they all allow for time travel. Join us today as we explore why this is so and the profound consequences that ensue. Special thanks to Prof Matt.
THANK-YOU to our supporters D. Smith, M. Sloan, C. Bottaccini, D. Daughaday, A. Jones, S. Brownlee, N. Kildal, Z. Star, E. West, T. Zajonc, C. Wolfred, L. Skov, G. Benson, A. De Vaal, M. Elliott, B. Daniluk, M. Forbes, S. Vystoropskyi, S. Lee, Z. Danielson, C. Fitzgerald, C. Souter, M. Gillette, T. Jeffcoat, H. Jensen, J. Rockett, N. Fredrickson, D. Holland, E. Hanway, D. Murphree, S. Hannum, T. Donkin, K. Myers, A. Schoen, K. Dabrowski, J. Black, R. Ramezankhani, J. Armstrong, K. Weber, S. Marks, L. Robinson, F. Van Exter, S. Roulier, B. Smith, P. Masterson, R. Sievers, G. Canterbury, J. Kill, J. Cassese, J. Kruger, S. Way, P. Finch, S. Applegate, L. Watson, T. Wheeler, E. Zahnle, N. Gebben, J. Bergman, E. Dessoi, J. Alexander, C. Macdonald, M. Hedlund, P. Kaup, C. Hays, S. Krasner, W. Evans, J. Curtin, J. Sturm, RAND Corp, T. Kordell, T. Ljungberg & M. Janke.
::References:: ► Alcubierre, M., 1994, “The warp drive: hyper-fast travel within general relativity”, Classical and Quantum Gravity, 11 L73: https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0009013 ► Pfenning, M. & Ford, L., 1997, “The unphysical nature of Warp Drive”, Classical and Quantum Gravity, 14, 1743: https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9702026 ► Finazzi, S., Liberati, S., Barceló, C., 2009, “Semiclassical instability of dynamical warp drives”, Physical Review D., 79, 124017: https://arxiv.org/abs/0904.0141 ► McMonigal, B., Lewis, G., O’Byrne, P., 2012, “Alcubierre warp drive: On the matter of matter”, Physical Review D., 85, 064024: https://arxiv.org/abs/1202.5708 ► Everett, A., 1996, “Warp drive and causality”, Physical Review D, 53, 7365: https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.53.
Including one long-awaited and colossal German satellite. It’s never too late to join the party when you’re headed to space.
On Friday, April 1 at 12:24 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 launched Transporter-4, SpaceX’s fourth dedicated smallsat rideshare program mission, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This was the seventh launch and landing of this Falcon 9 stage booster, which previously supported launch of Crew-1, Crew-2, SXM-8, CRS-23, IXPE, and one Starlink mission. Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
On board this flight were 40 spacecraft, including CubeSats, microsats, picosats, non-deploying hosted payloads, and an orbital transfer vehicle carrying spacecraft to be deployed at a later time.
No celebrities flew to space after SNL’s Pete Davidson pulled out. Blue Origin completed its fourth crewed spaceflight, taking six passengers up into suborbital space.
According to conspiracy theorists, this popular Air Force testing facility is a secret research center for studying alien technology. So what’s the truth and why did people want to raid Area 51 back in 2019?
Multiple lines of evidence — physical, chemical, and biological — must converge for scientists to conclude that alien life has been found. This article was posted on Big Think. Check it out here: https://bigthink.com/hard-science/alien-life-smoking-gun-evidence
