How Incomprehensible Could Extraterrestrials Be?
A few days ago Paul Gilster, the author of Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration and the curator of Centauri Dreams , posted a thoughtful discussion of a blog entry I wrote (titled What's The Connection Between Deafness and SETI? ) His discussion and the resulting comments were fascinating, and in this post I want to carry on that conversation. I want to ask: Will extraterrestrials be so different from us as to be truly incomprehensible? I think the answer is no. In one of the comments, Christopher Phoenix argued that aliens could be so different from us as to be incomprehensible. "How can we expect to use extraterrestrials as a mirror for human behavior? Excellent point. Okay. Still, it’s fair to ask if an alien species might be so different from us that even our science wouldn’t be able to get a grip on it. I don’t think biology in itself would create that kind of radical incomprehensibility. Technology presents us with a more difficult problem.
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Life...As We Don't Know It | Experts' Corner
This article originally appeared in ReaClearScience's Newton Blog. You can read the original here. It's amusing and intellectually stimulating to seriously ponder the existence and characteristics of alien life. But like quantum mechanics, such contemplations can easily wrack the mind, leaving one quite discombobulated. I can only imagine the self-inflicted vexations suffered by astrobiologists, whose livelihoods require daily ruminations about life on inconceivably faraway worlds. After all, the vast randomness inherent to the evolutionary process can give rise to creatures the likes of which we cannot fathom. So what would life resemble instead? My favorite answer to that question originated from the 1976 paper "Particles, Environments, and Possible Ecologies in the Jovian Atmosphere," penned by astrophysicists Carl Sagan and E. Over many thousands of years, these sinkers could evolve or coalesce into new life forms: "floaters." "It will show us what else is possible." (Images: 1.
On Stephen Hawking, Vader and Being More Machine Than Human | Wired Opinion
photo: NASA / Flickr Click-click-click: This is what you hear when having a conversation with Stephen Hawking. No voice, no other sounds, no facial expressions. For those who know him, Hawking may be able to communicate through his eyes; but for the rest of us, his sole means of communicating is through infrared connection to his computer. Today, January 8, is Hawking’s birthday, yet on this day it’s worth examining just who and what we are really celebrating: the man, the mind or … the machines? Hawking has become a kind of a “brain in a vat.” In one version of Hawking’s eulogistic story, we praise the smartest person in the world, the brilliant physicist, one of the greatest cosmologists of our time. But in another version of Hawking’s story, we notice that he is more “incorporated” than any other scientist, let alone human being. Hélène Mialet is an anthropologist of science and technology interested in innovation and creativity. Editor: Sonal Chokshi @smc90
Xenology Home Page
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Exoplanet Discoveries to Date Are Just a Drop in the Bucket [Interactive]
Astronomers have in the past 20 years located several hundred planets orbiting distant stars, and they have only scratched the surface. In a small patch of stars—less than 1 percent of the sky—in the Northern Hemisphere, NASA's Kepler mission has already found more than 100 planets, along with strong hints of thousands more. Stars across the sky ought to be similarly laden with planets. Graphics and interactive by Jan Willem Tulp (Sources: the Exoplanet Data Explorer at exoplanets.org; planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov; “The Exoplanet Orbit Database,” by J.
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Une nouvelle idée pour détecter les extraterrestres
"Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie", écrivait Blaise Pascal face au cosmos. Une manière moderne de réinterpréter cette phrase célèbre consiste à la rapprocher de l'échec qui, jusqu'à présent, a sanctionné toutes les tentatives des astronomes pour découvrir les signes d'une vie extraterrestre. E.T. se tait et son silence obstiné nous fait nous demander, encore et toujours, si nous sommes seuls dans l'Univers. Aujourd'hui, dans un article paru sur le site de pré-publications arXiv, deux chercheurs espagnols soumettent à la communauté scientifique une nouvelle idée. Ils sont partis de l'hypothèse selon laquelle une civilisation avancée serait capable d'explorer d'autres systèmes solaires que le sien, soit pour la science, soit pour exploiter leurs ressources, soit pour s'éloigner de son étoile en fin de vie avant qu'elle n'explose. Taille et vitesse.
Суровая зима в Норильске ... о_О
Journal information Current price300 LJ Tokens Social capital2 259 Friends of14 204 Duration10 hours Minimal stake300 LJT View all available promo Суровая зима в Норильске ... о_О asaratov January 16th, 2013 Хотите посмотреть во что на днях превратился город Норильск посленескольких дней пурги и обильного снегопада? Это просто жесть!
Looking for Alien 'Bubbles' in Other Galaxies
When I was under the velvet black skies of western Texas a few months ago I had a magnificent view of the star-studded bulge of our galaxy, in the direction of the summer constellation Sagittarius. How many advanced civilizations might be in this hub of the Milky Way? I pondered. After all, this is the direction where the mysterious “WOW” radio signal that was detected three decades ago came from. The problem is that we are embedded in a thick forest of stars, and identifying the location of an extraterrestrial civilization — one that’s attempting to contact us — is the proverbial needle-in-haystack search as the SETI scientists always say. Therefore, it would make sense to go looking at a neighboring “forest,” or rather nearby galaxy, for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. ANALYSIS: Could Terrorist Aliens Cyberattack Us? Because even the nearest galaxies are millions of light-years away, any idea of communicating with aliens is unfeasible. Image credit: NASA, ESA
