Lifeboat Foundation

It’s often said that we know more about the Moon than our own oceans. But what about the oceans of other moons?

Robotic-engineering company German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) has been working on the EurEx (Europa Explorer) project, which includes conceptual plans for a robotic system capable of exploring Europa’s icy subterranean oceans.

Continue reading “New Plans Show Autonomous Submarine Designed To Explore The Oceans Of Jupiter’s Moon” »

An international team of astronomers has just detected signals coming from almost 100 light years away, and they believe the signal is a strong candidate for extraterrestrial contact, according to a document circulated by Alexander Panov, a theorectical physicist at Lomonosov Moscow State University: “a strong signal in the direction of HD164595, a planet system in the constellation Hercules was detected on May 15, using the RATAN-600 radio telescope (below) in the Russian Republic of Karachay-Cherkessia.”

My new Vice Motherboard story on the Fermi Paradox, Jethro’s Window, and why we’ll never discover intelligent aliens:

Here’s the sad solution to Fermi’s Paradox: We’ve never discovered other life forms because language and communication methods in the Singularity evolve so rapidly that even in one minute, an entire civilization can become transformed and totally unintelligible. In an expanding universe that is at least 13.6 billion years old, this transformation might never end. What this means is we will never have more than a few seconds to understand or even notice our millions of neighbors. The nature of the universe—the nature of communication in a universe where intelligence exponentially grows—is to keep us forever unaware and alone.

The only time we may discover other intelligent life forms is that 100 or so years during Jethro’s Window, and then it requires the miracle of another species in a similar evolutionary time table, right then, looking for us too. Given the universe is so gargantuan and many billions of years old, even with millions of alien species out there, we’ll never find them. We’ll never know them. It’s an unfortunate mathematical certainty.

Continue reading “​The Language of Aliens Will Always Be Indecipherable” »

A new planet that bears striking similarities to our own planet prompts remarkable inroad into the study of space. This also brings a new area to search for the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

Back in 2013, the first signs of a planet over four light-years from our solar system were spotted. Since then, the scientific community has been working to gather more information via further observations, primarily with the help of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

To study and observe the red dwarf star, which was named Proxima Centauri, the Pale Red Dot campaign was started. Scientists used the HARPS spectograph on the ESO’s 3.6 meter telescope at La Silla in Chile. Combined with data gathered from other telescopes around the world, astronomers, led by Guillem Anglada-Escudé, observed a wobbling star that was apparently caused by the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet.

Continue reading “ESO Confirms: Earth-Sized Planet Found Around the Closest Star to Earth, Proxima Centauri” »

Hey, it’s probably not aliens—but you should stay excited anyway!

# Venus # Oxygen – Venus’ ‘Twin Planet’ Could Still Have Oxygen, Scientists Say : Nine months ago, astronomers announced that they were able to discover a planet that is said to be a twin to Venus. Today, it seems that a new study raises the possibility of the said planet to have oxygen in its atmosphere – don’t mistake it for the next livable planet though – it is said to have hellish temperatures, which automatically rules out the possibility of life.

Dubbed the GJ 1132b, IFL Science noted that it is larger than Earth in size and mass. Temperature-wise, it is considerably hot at 120 to 320 degrees Celsius, but it is still considered cooler than most of the rocky planets previously detected.

Continue reading “Venus’ ‘Twin Planet’ Could Still Have Oxygen, Scientists Say” »

Absolutely, undeniably awesome.

We got about a minute of footage last week, and now the full trailer for the movie adaptation of Ted Chiang’s “Story Of Your Life” is here. And it is tense.

Whereas before, the footage ended with Amy Adams’ Dr. Banks getting her first look inside one of the weird alien monoliths that have appeared, the trailer goes much further. We see her actually communicating with the aliens, while the rest of the world goes appropriately batshit. There’s a lot less action in this sci-fi movie than there is drama, and it all looks great.

Continue reading “The First Arrival Trailer Makes Talking to Aliens Terrifying” »

This is a new one on me. I will admit that some of us often have folks trying to figure out how we come up with the stuff that we share as our vision of the future.

As scientists suggest humans may be descendants of alien civilizations, see which extraterrestrial race you most connect with.

Many years ago, Carl Sagan predicted there could be as many as 10,000 advanced extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy.

After nearly 60 years of searching without success, a growing list of scientists believe life on Earth only came about because of a lucky series of evolutionary accidents, a long list of improbable events that just happened to come together at the right time and will never be repeated. Is it possible they are right and we are all there is? Highly unlikely.

Earth is a typical rocky planet, in an average solar system, nestled in the spiral arm of an ordinary galaxy. All the events and elements that came together to build our world could happen almost everywhere throughout the galaxy and there should be nothing unusual about the evolution of life on this planet or any others.