Tag: Aliens
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The buzz over an ‘alien’ interstellar comet shows how way-out speculation goes viral
An astrophotograph of the interstellar comet known as 3I/ATLAS highlights its green coma and a wandering blue-tinted ion tail. (Copyright Victor Sabet and Julien De Winter, republished with permssion) Is an interstellar spacecraft zooming through our solar system? That’s the big question for fans of unidentified flying objects — and for a researcher at the…
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Microsoft joins with students to document humanity with a ‘Golden Record’ of glass
Richard Black, research director for Microsoft’s Project Silica, holds a data storage platter. (Microsoft Photo) Forty-seven years after NASA sent a “Golden Record” into deep space to document humanity’s view of the world, Microsoft’s Project Silica is teaming up with a citizen-science effort to lay the groundwork — or, more aptly, the glasswork — for…
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What if the aliens win? That’s the subject of a new saga from creators of ‘The Expanse’
Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham are the authors of the books in “The Expanse” series, under the pen name James S.A. Corey. Their newly published novel, “The Mercy of Gods,” kicks off a whole new trilogy. Franck and Abraham will be at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, Wash., on Saturday. (Kyle Zimmerman Photo)…
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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…
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44 years after its first message to aliens, Arecibo Observatory calls for follow-up
A global contest will give the 1974 Arecibo Message a reboot. (Arecibo Observatory Illustration) The Arecibo Observatory today kicked off a student-focused competition to design a new message to beam to extraterrestrials, 44 years to the day since the first deliberate message was sent out from Arecibo’s 1,000-foot-wide radio telescope. “Our society and our technology…
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‘Oumuamua, oh my! Was interstellar object actually an alien solar sail? Not so fast
An artist’s conception shows what the interstellar asteroid Oumuamua might look like. Or does it actually look more an alien light sail? (ESO Illustration / M. Kornmesser) ‘Oumuamua is long gone from the inner solar system, but the mystery surrounding the interstellar interloper has been rekindled, thanks to a research paper written by two Harvard…
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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…
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Search warrant links evacuation at solar observatory to child porn investigation
The Richard B. Dunn Solar Telescope is the centerpiece of the Sunspot Solar Observatory on Sacramento Peak in New Mexico. (National Science Foundation Photo) A federal search warrant indicates that the Sunspot Solar Observatory in New Mexico and surrounding homes were evacuated this month not because of alien visitation, but because of a child pornography…
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Officials explain why they closed Sunspot Solar Observatory (and it wasn’t aliens)
The Richard B. Dunn Solar Telescope is the centerpiece of the Sunspot Solar Observatory on Sacramento Peak in New Mexico. (National Science Foundation Photo) After days of fighting rumors about alien visitations, the managers of the Sunspot Solar Observatory in New Mexico say they’re reopening the facility — and have shed more light on the reason…
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Scientists come up with revised ‘Rio scale’ to rate claims of extraterrestrial contact
SETI pioneer Jill Tarter pays a visit to the Allen Telescope Array in California, one of the prime sites for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. (Credit: SETI Institute) For almost 60 years, efforts to pick up signs of extraterrestrial civilizations have yielded a big fat zero, but there have been plenty of false alarms to…