Located in Austrailia, the CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope picked up the strange signal stemming from Proxima Centauri.
CSIRO/A. Cherney.
On 29 April 2019, the Parkes Radio Telescope in New South Wales, Australia, picked up an unusual signal while searching for signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. The telescope was observing Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the sun and host to a number of exoplanets that are potentially habitable.
Scientists from Denmark and China have estimated germline mutation rates across vertebrates by sequencing and comparing genetic samples from 151 mother, father, and offspring trios from 68 species of mammals, fishes, birds and reptiles. A bioinformatics pipeline was designed to read, analyze and compare the genome mutations that occur yearly and between generations in each species.
The research was published March 1, 2023, in the journal Nature.
Knowing the germline mutation rate could allow a greater understanding of evolutionary drivers and be used to estimate when a species first arose. Despite the variety of evolutionary paths seen in 68 different species, researchers found the germline mutation rate to be relatively conserved.
For years, scientists have known there was something hidden above the entrance to the Great Pyramid. Now, they’ve finally revealed it.
Posted in nanotechnology
New research sheds lights on the resilient and technologically advanced Gravettian culture, which dominated Ice Age Europe and left a 20,000-year mark.
Basic ideas for the laymen. Accurate, but not much new.
It demands we be both “brave” and responsible, DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis says.
An international team of researchers stumbled upon an exploding supernova in a distant spiral galaxy, using data from the first year of interstellar observation by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb) is an orbiting infrared observatory that will complement and extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope. It covers longer wavelengths of light, with greatly improved sensitivity, allowing it to see inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today as well as looking further back in time to observe the first galaxies that formed in the early universe.
Posted in alien life, futurism
As scientist extraordinaire and author of an empire of science-fiction books, Arthur C. Clarke is one of the farthest-seeing visionaries of our time. His pithy quotations tug harder than those of most futurists on our collective psyches for their insights into humanity and our unique place in the cosmos. And none do so more than his famous Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
This observation stimulated me to think about the impact the discovery of an extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) would have on science and religion. To that end, I would like to immodestly propose Shermer’s Last Law (I don’t believe in naming laws after oneself, so as the good book says, the last shall be first and the first shall be last): “Any sufficiently advanced ETI is indistinguishable from God.”
God is typically described by Western religions as omniscient and omnipotent. Because we are far from possessing these traits, how can we possibly distinguish a God who has them absolutely from an ETI who merely has them copiously relative to us? We can’t. But if God were only relatively more knowing and powerful than we are, then by definition the deity would be an ETI!
