Space Time Stories

Robert Bradbury the person who introduced us to Matrioshka Brains has passed away.  Here’s an eloquent memorium from George Dvorsky. I wonder if we will ever learn that there are billions of Matrioshka Brains in the Milky Way, most of them far from the galactic center.  We currently call them dark matter. If I had [...]

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Richard Hoover of NASA claims to have found alien microbes inside of a meteorite (right side,  left side is a real terrestrial bacterium). I predict 2 types of responses:  pathological rejection and people who equate this with sentient space faring beings. Frankly I think panspermia is the only theory of evolution which makes much sense.  [...]

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One of the reasons life survives on Earth is that we have a big brother protecting us from sterilizing events (asteroid bombardment).   Jupiter has been a powerful sink for asteroids that would have killed us all.  To find alien life in another system we should focus on those systems which have a large planet well [...]

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Speculation about life on Titan or other cold worlds is misguided because the chemical reaction rates are simply too slow. All chemical reactions have a rate.  That rate has an exponential dependence on temperature as described by the Arrhenius equation. rate = A exp (-Ea/kT) Ea is the activation energy, k is Boltzmann’s constant, T [...]

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The SETI Institute will host Celebrating Science 2010 Family Science Faire Saturday May 22, 2010. From their announcement:   At our Celebrating Science 2010 Family Science Faire, you will have the opportunity to meet SETI Institute scientists and discover what the future holds for SETI and astrobiology. Learn about the SETI Institute’s pioneering exploration of life, [...]

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Interesting article in Science News about SETI:  Can you Hear me Now? Related posts Where to Find Alien Life (0) Too cold for life (0) SETI Institute Celebration (0) RIP Robert Bradbury (0)

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“Peering far beyond our solar system, NASA researchers have detected the basic chemistry for life in a second hot gas planet, advancing astronomers toward the goal of being able to characterize planets where life could exist. The planet is not habitable but it has the same chemistry that, if found around a rocky planet in [...]

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The basic argument of an atheist is “If there is a God then prove it, where is the evidence?  I can’t see him, I’ve never seen a miracle, there is no evidence of supernatural powers or beings.”  Replace those words with aliens and you get the exact same argument.  Anyone who argues against the existence [...]

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Work published in 2008 from Israel claims detection of element #122.  If true the implications are stunning.  The only possible method of generating element 122 is by artificial nucleosynthesis, a technical feat beyond the capability of modern day humans. While subsequent study may have disproven the theory this opens up a new method of proving [...]

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Many recent blog posts continue to try to explain the Fermi Paradox.  I’ll try to explain why these writers just don’t get it. http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/the-fermi-paradox/ http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html http://www.entangledstates.org/2009/06/where-are-they-another-solution-to-fermis-paradox.html http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23604/ http://www.wunderkabinett.co.uk/damndata/index.php?/archives/1796-Alternative-solutions-to-the-Fermi-paradox.html http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0408521v1 Many people still are confused on several points about the Fermi Paradox.  Let’s start with the name. The word paradox is used because everyone “knows” it’s [...]

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