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 [...]
Where to Find Alien Life
May 25th, 2010 · No Comments
Tags: science
Too cold for life
May 22nd, 2010 · No Comments
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 is the temperature, [...]
Tags: science
Where are the aliens?
October 20th, 2009 · 3 Comments
“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 [...]
Tags: fermi paradox
Has Optical SETI discovered aliens?
May 18th, 2009 · 4 Comments
Optical SETI offers a much higher chance of finding a real signal because of the simple fact that there are no known natural sources of nanosecond pulses (or shorter). Any 10 nanosecond pulse of light can only be from intelligent life (or of course a shocking new natural phenomenon).
Recently a researcher in Australia has detected [...]
Tags: Announcements