Some of the world's leading astronomers -including Great Britain's astronomer royal, Sir Martin Rees- believe aliens, rather than using different radio waves or visible light to signal, may be using an entirely different communication medium such as ghostly neutrinos or with gravitational waves (ripples in the fabric of space-time) or using communication mechanisms we cannot begin to fathom.
“The fact that we have not yet found the slightest evidence for life - much less intelligence - beyond this Earth," said Arthur C. Clarke, "does not surprise or disappoint me in the least. Our technology must still be laughably primitive, we may be like jungle savages listening for the throbbing of tom-toms while the ether around them carries more words per second than they could utter in a lifetime."
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Nuclear-powered plasma drives carrying men to Mars - the fact we can say that as a future instead of fiction makes us so happy! Tests on a new kind of ion drive establish that's already applicable to orbital operations, and could be the breakthrough that blasts us to the next planet.
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Stephen Hawking proclaims in a new television upcoming Discovery Channel documentary series, that in a universe with 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars, it is unlikely that earth is the only place where life has evolved.
"To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," he said, according to Great Britain's The Sunday Times. "The real challenge is working out what aliens might actually be like."
Continue reading "Stephen Hawking Update: "Alien Contact Not a Wise Idea" (A Weekend Feature)" »
Before the year 2020, scientists are expected to launch intelligent space robots that will venture out to explore the universe for us.
"Robotic exploration probably will always be the trail blazer for human exploration of far space," says Wolfgang Fink, physicist and researcher at Caltech. "We haven't yet landed a human being on Mars but we have a robot there now. In that sense, it's much easier to send a robotic explorer. When you can take the human out of the loop, that is becoming very exciting."
Continue reading "Robotic Probes Poised to Explore Milky Way by 2020 -A Galaxy Insight" »
The intriguing remark was made by Lord Martin Rees, a leading cosmologist and astrophysicist who is the president of Britain’s Royal Society and astronomer to the Queen of England. Rees, who last month hosted the National Science Academy’s first conference on the possibility of alien life, said he believes the existence of extra terrestrial life may be beyond human understanding.
“They could be staring us in the face and we just don’t recognize them. The problem is that we’re looking for something very much like us, assuming that they at least have something like the same mathematics and technology."
Continue reading "Invisible Extraterrestrials? World-Leading Physicist Says "They Could Exist in Forms We Can't Conceive"" »
"The decision to abandon moon exploration has “decline” written all over it. Americans often profess astonishment that the Chinese of 600 years ago failed to take full advantage of their technological superiority. They invented gunpowder and, on the eve of Columbus’s discovery of America, their ocean-going vessels were bigger and more seaworthy than Europe’s. Perhaps now the process by which an innovative civilization invents technologies that it is unable to exploit will be easier to explain."
Christopher Caldwell, American journalist/author
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In two new videos from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft, bright flashes of light known as sun glints act as beacons signaling large bodies of water on Earth. These observations give scientists a way to pick out planets beyond our solar system (extrasolar planets) that are likely to have expanses of liquid, and so stand a better chance of having life. '
Continue reading "Earth Shouts "Life!" to Alien Astronomers: Sun Glints Seen from Space Signal Oceans and Lakes" »
"Pulsar Power," the Next Big Thing! The European Space Agency’s Ariadna initiative is studying a totally awesome navigation system that creams the one you'll find in your new Porche: they are examining the feasibility of navigation relying on millisecond pulsars, rotating neutron stars that spin faster than 40 revolutions per second. The pulses of these dead stars can be used as exquisitely accurate timing mechanisms.
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Mankind's most impressive offspring is adventuring towards interstellar space, and it's making amazing discoveries. In proof that rocket scientists are awesome, Voyager 1 is still functioning after thirty-two years in space. In proof that we'll never run out of new science, it's discovered an unexpected magnetic field in the material surrounding our solar system. And in proof that even astrophysicists can be silly, that material is called the "Local Fluff."
It's a streamer of interstellar particles held at bay by the Sun's magnetic field, simmering at six thousand degrees Kelvin - that's as hot as the surface of the sun - and by all the old models it simply shouldn't be there. Now Voyager's heroic hardware, the furthest flung man-made object ever and advancing at seventeen kilometers a second, has found the reason: it's held together by a magnetic field.
More amazingly, this field isn't just holding up against the sun but ancient explosions as well. Local supernova sent shockwaves of million-degree gas sweeping through our arm of the Milky Way, making the mere four-figure plasma of the Local Fluff feel like a cool oasis. This material should shoulder the Fluff aside exactly like you'd expect "supernova shockwave" to affect "Fluff", but the magnetic field threading the charged material keeps it clustered around our solar system - and slows the advance of the star-death fueled material which would compress our precious protective solar wind.
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It seems that a SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) experiment happened decades before Project Ozma -a pioneering SETI project started in 1960 by Cornell University astronomer Frank Drake (left), at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia. The object of the experiment was to search for signs of life in distant solar systems through interstellar radio waves.The historians at the blog "Letters of Note" uncovered a telegram sent in 1924 by the Chief of Naval Operations, Edward W. Eberle instructing the United States Navy to listen for radio transmissions from the planet Mars.
Continue reading "1924: US Navy Ordered to Listen for Martian Radio Broadcasts (A Holiday Feature)" »