Tag: Alien megastructure
-
Bad moon falling: Geophysicist adds her own scientific spin to ‘Moonfall’ movie
“Moonfall” features a resurrected space shuttle and an ominously looming moon. (Courtesy of Lionsgate) Even geophysicist Mika McKinnon, one of the science consultants for a $140 million disaster movie called “Moonfall,” admits that the moon-crashing tale is ridiculously exuberant. But what’s wrong with that? “A movie is supposed to be fun, and science is allowed to be fun,”…
-
Scientists look for new ways to track the technosignatures of alien civilizations
An artist’s conception shows a crumbling megastructure known as a Dyson sphere orbiting a distant star. Could such structures produce detectable technosignatures? (Danielle Futselaar Illustration) Could extraterrestrial civilizations leave their fingerprints as chlorofluorocarbons in planetary atmospheres, or the waste heat generated by industrial processes, or artificial bursts of neutrinos or gravitational waves? That’s what a…
-
Are we alone? NASA turns to the search for technosignatures beyond Earth
An artist’s representation shows a megastructure known as a Dyson sphere capturing the energy from a distant star. Such a structure could create observable technosignatures pointing to the civilization behind its construction. (Credit: Danielle Futselaar / SETI International) It’s been a quarter-century since Congress cut off NASA funding for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or…