Filed under: Astronomy, Brave New World, Connections, Fermi's Paradox, Galaxy Zoo, General Musings, New Horizons, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Space, tech, Universe Today | Tags: Aliens, blogging, Communion of Dreams, exoplanets, HD164595, jim downey, Kardashev scale, Paul Gilster, radio astronomy, Science Fiction, SETI, space, technology, Wikipedia, Zelenchukskaya
An international team of scientists from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is investigating mysterious signal spikes emitting from a 6.3-billion-year-old star in the constellation Hercules—95 light years away from Earth. The implications are extraordinary and point to the possibility of a civilization far more advanced than our own.
The unusual signal was originally detected on May 15, 2015, by the Russian Academy of Science-operated RATAN-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya, Russia, but was kept secret from the international community. Interstellar space reporter Paul Gilster broke the story after the researchers quietly circulated a paper announcing the detection of “a strong signal in the direction of HD164595.”
Huh.
Even if it is a signal directly beamed at us, it would require a Kardashev Type I civilization (about 200 years beyond where Earth is currently). If it is just beaming off in all directions, it’s another whole magnitude of power — about a Kardashev Type II.
Huh.
Yeah, I’d say it warrants paying attention to.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Astronomy, Babylon 5, Brave New World, Connections, Feedback, Fermi's Paradox, Gardening, Habanero, J. Michael Straczynski, Man Conquers Space, Marketing, Promotion, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Space, Survival, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Babylon 5, Bad Astronomy, blogging, care-giving, Communion of Dreams, Dukhat, feedback, free, gardening, Glen Tickle, Habaneros, Her Final Year, hospice, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, Kurzgesagt, Laughing Squid, Mother's Day, promotion, science, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, video, writing, www youtube
Via Laughing Squid, a nice little animated exploration of the Fermi Paradox:
(Does not contain spoilers for Communion of Dreams. 😉 )
* * *
Been a busy week. Part of it was putting in my garden:
(That’s just the tomato plants — the super-hot peppers will go in next week.)
Part of it was a MASSIVE job converting a 16 x 16 storage space into the beginnings of a workshop:
(There’s still lots to do, but man, what a change from being hip-high in grungy boxes and scattered junk!)
And part of it was we have a new addition to the family:
(He’s just 6 weeks old, entirely too cute, bold & adventurous, and tiny. For now. No name yet, though given his grey color I suggested perhaps we should go with Dukhat … )
* * *
I’m just now finishing up the first major revision to the working copy of St Cybi’s Well. I already have a couple of people lined up to take a look at it with fresh eyes, but if anyone else is interested also having a preview, leave a comment and I’ll get in touch with you.
Lastly: for Mother’s Day weekend, the Kindle edition of Her Final Year will be available for free. Check it out, download it, share it with others!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, Fermi's Paradox, Humor, NYT, Privacy, Science, Science Fiction, Seth Shostak, SETI, Space, Survival, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: astronomy, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Drake Equation, Fermi's Paradox, humor, jim downey, New York Times, science, Science Fiction, Seth Shostak, SETI, space, Stephen Hawking, technology, writing
Seth Shostak, on the topic of how to introduce ourselves to our neighbors:
A better approach is to note that the nearest intelligent extraterrestrials are likely to be at least dozens of light-years away. Even assuming that active SETI provokes a reply, it won’t be breezy conversation. Simple back-and-forth exchanges would take decades. This suggests that we should abandon the “greeting card” format of previous signaling schemes, and offer the aliens Big Data.
For example, we could transmit the contents of the Internet. Such a large corpus — with its text, pictures, videos and sounds — would allow clever extraterrestrials to decipher much about our society, and even formulate questions that could be answered with the material in hand.
While I still agree with Stephen Hawking on the idea of ‘active SETI’, I think that there’s merit in the idea of exposing other nearby civilizations to what we’re really like, warts and all. Because as soon as they decoded our transmissions well enough to understand the comments section of pretty much any major site on the web, they’d either completely wall off our solar system* and post warnings around it or just trigger our sun to go supernova. Either way, we’d never know what happened, and the rest of the galaxy would be safe …
Jim Downey
*gee, that’d make an interesting premise for a SF novel, doncha think?
Filed under: Astronomy, Fermi's Paradox, General Musings, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Space, Survival | Tags: astronomy, blogging, Drake Equation, exoplanets, Fermi's Paradox, gamma ray bursts, Harvard, Hebrew University, jim downey, life, physics, Raul Jimenez, science, Science Fiction, SETI, space, survival, Tsvi Piran
It really does seem to be a pretty universal law:
On the role of GRBs on life extinction in the Universe
As a copious source of gamma-rays, a nearby Galactic Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) can be a threat to life. Using recent determinations of the rate of GRBs, their luminosity function and properties of their host galaxies, we estimate the probability that a life-threatening (lethal) GRB would take place. Amongst the different kinds of GRBs, long ones are most dangerous. There is a very good chance (but no certainty) that at least one lethal GRB took place during the past 5 Gyr close enough to Earth as to significantly damage life. There is a 50% chance that such a lethal GRB took place during the last 500 Myr causing one of the major mass extinction events. Assuming that a similar level of radiation would be lethal to life on other exoplanets hosting life, we explore the potential effects of GRBs to life elsewhere in the Galaxy and the Universe.
What that means is summed up in this article. Here’s the conclusion:
Astronomers have long known that the Earth occupies a unique position in the solar system that allows life to flourish. This idea of a habitable zone now allows them to focus search for exoplanets that might also have conditions that are right for life. Now they can take this further by excluding inhospitable regions of the galaxy, and searching only those stars and galaxies that exist in the universe’s habitable zones.
Of course, that’s just for life as we know it …
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, Connections, Fermi's Paradox, National Geographic, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Space, tech | Tags: astronomy, blogging, Drake Equation, Fermi's Paradox, jim downey, National Geographic, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, technology
As something of a follow up to my last post, there’s a great little item about the development of the Drake equation over on National Geographic. Here’s a good passage:
It’s this kind of guesswork that tends to inflame the Drake equation’s critics, those who complain that the equation isn’t predictive, is too open-ended, and doesn’t provide any answers. But “predictive” isn’t really what Drake ever intended.
“It’s a way to frame the problem,” says MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager, about the equation. “In science, you always need an equation—but this isn’t one you’re going to solve. It just helps you dissect everything.”
Definitely worth reading, as well as thinking about.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ad Astra, Astronomy, Connections, Fermi's Paradox, General Musings, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Space, Survival | Tags: astronomy, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Fermi's Paradox, jim downey, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, Wait But Why
Sometime when I’m really bored I may go to the trouble to try and figure out when the first variety of this image was made — I remember it back to my childhood (I think … you know how tricky memories are):
Nice little bit of perspective, eh? Which of course is why it has become such a classic image in one form or another.
And that little bit of perspective gives rise to a very nice explanation and exploration of the Fermi Paradox (which I have written about/mentioned many times) over on Wait But Why. Here’s a bit from the closing paragraphs:
As we continue along with our possibly-futile search for extraterrestrial intelligence, I’m not really sure what I’m rooting for. Frankly, learning either that we’re officially alone in the universe or that we’re officially joined by others would be creepy, which is a theme with all of the surreal storylines listed above—whatever the truth actually is, it’s mindblowing.
Beyond its shocking science fiction component, The Fermi Paradox also leaves me with a deep humbling. Not just the normal “Oh yeah, I’m microscopic and my existence lasts for three seconds” humbling that the universe always triggers. The Fermi Paradox brings out a sharper, more personal humbling, one that can only happen after spending hours of research hearing your species’ most renowned scientists present insane theories, change their minds again and again, and wildly contradict each other—reminding us that future generations will look at us the same way we see the ancient people who were sure that the stars were the underside of the dome of heaven, and they’ll think “Wow they really had no idea what was going on.”
Of course, this whole question is at the very heart of Communion of Dreams. And, in a way, also at the heart of St Cybi’s Well. You’ll see.
But for now, go enjoy that post at Wait But Why. It’s quite good.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Astronomy, Connections, Fermi's Paradox, Humor, Predictions, Science Fiction, SETI, Space, Survival | Tags: astronomy, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Fermi's Paradox, humor, jim downey, predictions, Randall Munroe, Science Fiction, space, xkcd
If you consider the full implications of what is revealed in Communion of Dreams, this might well be a fairly good explanation …
From the brilliant Randall Munroe, of course. Go to his site to see the ‘hidden text’.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, Fermi's Paradox, General Musings, MIT, Reproduction, Science, Space, Survival | Tags: biology, evolution, Jeremy England, jim downey, MIT, Natalie Wolchover, physics, Quanta Magazine, science, space, thermodynamics
This is a really interesting idea: that fundamental thermodynamic forces lead very naturally to the the beginning and evolution of life. From the start of the article:
Why does life exist?
Popular hypotheses credit a primordial soup, a bolt of lightning and a colossal stroke of luck. But if a provocative new theory is correct, luck may have little to do with it. Instead, according to the physicist proposing the idea, the origin and subsequent evolution of life follow from the fundamental laws of nature and “should be as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill.”
From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. Jeremy England, a 31-year-old assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life.
It’s important to note that this is not in any way in conflict with current understanding of evolution — rather, as the article says: “England’s theory is meant to underlie, rather than replace, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, which provides a powerful description of life at the level of genes and populations.”
Take a few minutes to read the article; it’s well written and non-technical but assumes a basic scientific understanding of both evolution and thermodynamics.
And if proven true, implies that the universe should be full of biological life as a manifestation of basic physical processes.
*Very* interesting, indeed.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 