Lifeboat Foundation

A disruptive new planet-hunting technology, now under study as part of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, could literally detect and then look for biosignatures from every Earth 2.0 within a thirty-light-year radius of our solar system.

Known as DICER (The Diffractive Interfero Coronagraph Exoplanet Resolver), the key to this NIAC study’s revolutionary means of detecting these planets is that unlike conventional optical space telescopes — which use curved, highly polished mirrors to collect starlight — this mission would employ flat sets of what are known as diffraction gratings.

Who says you need a conventional telescope to find exoplanets? NASA has funded a ‘Phase I’ study for the development of a whole new means of detecting and then teasing spectra from very nearby exoplanetary earths.

Continue reading “NASA Funds Disruptive Space Tech To Detect Very Nearby ExoEarths” »

Data from BepiColombo and Solar Orbiter during Venus gravity assists reveal how a magnetic field protects the Venusian atmosphere.

The acoustically generated force will help astronomers better understand the sun’s photosphere and the causes of space weather.

There’s apparently a dearth of close-orbiting Neptune-size planets in our galaxy, and two observation techniques are starting to explain why.

Astronomers picked up extraterrestrial signals which they previously missed in an area they thought was devoid of potential ET activity. It could be the first hint that humans are not alone in the universe.

Mysterious Signals Detected

Continue reading “3 Reasons Technosignatures Detected by AI-Trained Algorithm Can Be Extraterrestrial Activities” »

A video series looking at concepts for truly huge structures that we might see in the future. We begin with ground-based and Low Orbit structures to help us get up into space and proceed up through artificial habitats and planets to structures which encompass stars and can even move them. Audio-only version for mobile devices available at: https://soundcloud.com/isaac-arthur-148927746/sets/

Scientists’ insatiable search for finding another planet that could support human life has just got a leg up following the discovery of two Earth-like alien worlds. Both the spatial bodies have a mass similar to that of Earth and have been found in the habitable zone of a star so far known as GJ 1002. The star is one of the dwarf stars referred to as M dwarfs, which are stars that have only a fraction of the Sun’s mass and luminosity.

The discovery was made by scientists working at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in Spain. Astrophysicist Vera María Passenger explained to Science Alert that GJ 1,002 was a “dwarf” star with a mass only one-eighth that of the Sun. “It is quite a cool, faint star. This means that its habitability zone is very close to the star.”

Can an early introduction to basic astronomy knowledge help solve the root cause of ignorance and human suffering?

LCARS is the fictional computer operating system used by Starfleet starships in several Star Trek TV shows and films. The system is currently displayed in the animated comedy Trek series Lower Decks. Now, one intrepid fan has adapted the Lower Decks version of LCARS into a “crazy fan project:” Project RITOS.

RITOS is a webpage that recreates the LCARS system. It’s a fun little site to poke around on. But, since this is just a recreation, there’s no actual functionality you can incorporate onto your computer. As the RITOS About page states, you just “point & click & watch. There are no goals nor wrong thing to do here. It’s just a mindless site.”

It may be mindless, but it’s also a faithful recreation of the LCARS system as depicted not just in Star Trek: Lower Decks but also in The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. Users can click around into various displays that show crew quarters, a ship map of the Cerritos (the Federation starship in Lower Decks), JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) images, and a Sick Bay screen. There are plenty of fun things to click on and little easter eggs to uncover for dedicated Trek fans.