Showing posts with label Intelligent Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Intelligent Life. Show all posts

Saturday, June 18, 2022

Signal From Advanced Alien Civilization Might Have Been Detected?

Signal From Advanced Alien Civilization Might Have Been Detected

     Scientists in China say they have detected what could be the trace of a signal from an alien civilization.

The researchers have identified what they have called
By Ed Browne
Newsweek
6-15-22
"suspicious" signals from space as part of a search for evidence of aliens, and work is ongoing to determine that they might be.

The signals were detected by China's FAST radio telescope, also referred to as the "Sky Eye" telescope

Monday, November 08, 2021

So You Think You Found Aliens – Now What?

Alien Radio Signal From Proxima Centauri

NASA would like for you to be really, really, sure it’s aliens.
     There’s a growing consensus in the scientific community that there’s alien life out there, somewhere, in some form or another. It’s only a matter of time and scientific rigor before we find it.

By David Axe
The Baily Beast
11-5-21
If this summer’s spasm of excitement over “UFO sightings” is any indication, the public is primed to run with any evidence, however thin, that we’re not alone in the universe. Even if our extraterrestrial company is merely some microbe, living or long-dead.

Anticipating mounting evidence of alien life, and also anticipating that the media might mischaracterize that evidence, NASA’s good-natured chief scientist wants to put some guardrails on the story—by placing potential evidence of alien life on a seven-step scale that ranges from interesting to definitive.

Friday, November 05, 2021

Framework for Reporting Evidence of Alien Life

Framework for Reporting Evidence of Alien Life


     Our generation could realistically be the one to discover evidence of life beyond Earth. With this privileged potential comes responsibility. The magnitude of the question of whether we are alone in the Universe, and the public interest therein,
By James Green ...
Nature.com
10-27-21
opens the possibility that results may be taken to imply more than the observations support, or than the observers intend. As life-detection objectives become increasingly prominent in space sciences, it is essential to open a community dialogue about how to convey information in a subject matter that is diverse, complicated and has a high potential to be sensationalized. Establishing best practices for communicating about life detection can serve to set reasonable expectations on the early stages of a hugely challenging endeavour, attach value to incremental steps along the path, and build public trust by making clear that false starts and dead ends are an expected and potentially productive part of the scientific process.

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

The EAAROCIBO Project: New Methodology in Searching for Aliens

The EAAROCIBO Project


Is there anyone working out there?
Astronomers plan to listen for noise made by alien factories using the first UK telescope dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrials.

     The EAAROCIBO project – launched by a group of scientists and businessmen based in East Anglia – aims to ditch the traditional method of searching for ET that has so far failed to detect interstellar radio transmissions.

The new project is named after the iconic space telescope at Arecibo in Puerto Rico that featured in the 1997 movie Contact, starring Jodie Foster.

Last November the US National Science Foundation announced
David Clarke
By David Clarke
The UFO Chronicles
1-14-21
the closure of operations at the 57-year-old observatory after two cables gashed a 30-metre hole in the telescope’s huge reflector dish.

60 years ago Frank Drake used the 85-foot antenna at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank in West Virginia to search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). This was humanity’s first attempt to detect interstellar radio transmissions.

There have been many other unsuccessful attempts to detect alien signals from space. Billionaire Yuri Milner recently extended the search by backing Breakthrough Listen, a new $100 million effort to find alien life searching for signals from a million nearby stars.

Argentinian physicist and UNESCO consultant Guillermo Lemarchand believes that we have only probed around a hundred-trillionth of the cosmic haystack for intelligent signals. Scientists say that the search for ET is a numbers game and the more you look the greater the chances of you finding evidence for their existence.

Jason Williams and Jeff Lashley of the East Anglian Astrophysical Research organisation (EAARO) have a new search concept, based on an idea by British-born physicist Professor Paul Davies.

The EAARO team have developed a disruptive approach to traditional SETI that is dedicated to finding the techno-signatures of interplanetary industry and mining operations.

This novel search method works by looking for noise produced by industrial technologies such as machinery and spacecraft. Unlike traditional searches, EAAROCIBO’s ground-based telescope will focus on a particular patch of space with the largest number of stars, a concept similar to that used by the orbiting Kepler Telescope in its search for extra-solar planets.

EAARO are looking at two possible locations for siting the telescope. The first is near Bodmin in Cornwall, and the second option is in North Yorkshire on the edge of the National Park. Filming started last month for a documentary that will be used as a resource for crowd funding. The first funding stage is to build a scale working model of the antenna, the second stage will be for the materials and services required for the actual antenna and associated equipment.

“I’m delighted that EAARO will be dedicated to this new approach to SETI,’ commented Professor Davies. ‘While all searches are welcome, what the subject really needs is some innovative thinking. Under Jason Williams’ leadership, the EAARO project will serve as an inspirational trailblazer for SETI 2.0.”

In 1977 Jerry R Ehman using the Big Ear Telescope in Ohio discovered the historic WOW! signal which showed characteristics of being extra-terrestrial. The origin of this 72 second radio signal is still unknown and may be the strongest candidate for an alien radio transmission ever detected. Ohio State University scrapped the telescope in 1998 to make way for the expansion of a golf course.

In honour of Dr John D Kraus who designed and built the Big Ear, EAARO plan to rebuild a similar ‘Kraus Style’ Telescope as the receiving end of EAAROCIBO. It will be the only telescope of its kind ever to be built in the UK and its design elements fit well with Jason and Jeff’s design concept.

EAARO’s Space Operations Centre in Cambridgeshire (EAARO)
EAARO MD Jason Williams said:
“EAAROCIBO will be the first dedicated SETI instrument of its kind ever to be built in the UK. Our novel research strategy and innovative approach to combining classic and cutting-edge technologies will give us a refreshing new perspective in this exciting field of research.”
Robert Kuhn, creator and host of the TV series Closer to the Truth, said:
“For centuries, as part of humanity’s grand quest to comprehend existence, to find our place in the vast, ineffable cosmos, great minds have been wondering about, and arguing about, the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence on other planets. As we continue to confirm new earth-like planets throughout our galaxy, and no doubt throughout the universe, employing new technologies in our search, here’s hoping EAARO can help bring us closer to truth.”
The project is supported by Associate Professor David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University’s Centre for Culture Media and Society. He said:
“The desire to find evidence that we are not alone in the universe may become one of the defining human quests of the 21st century. Opinion polls consistently show that up to half of all Britons believe that ET life exists. This project is important because direct confirmation that we are not alone is seen by many as being fundamental to understanding our true place in the cosmos.”
EAARO is a not for profit charitable company established back in 2011 as a space research organisation with a high level of public engagement: http://www.eaaro.org.uk/

The organisation has a growing estate with a Space Operations Centre at the former RAF Alconbury airfield near Cambridge, a fully operational radio observatory, a satellite ground station in Hertfordshire and an on-going meteor radar system project on the Orkney Islands Their objective is to educate and inspire people in the areas of Science, technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics (STEAM) through meaningful space research.

Thursday, January 14, 2021

Alien Radio Signal From Proxima Centauri?

Alien Radio Signal From Proxima Centauri


     Nobody believes it was ET phoning, but radio astronomers admit they don’t have an explanation yet for a beam of radio waves that apparently came from the direction of the star Proxima Centauri.

By Dennis Overbye
New York Times
12-31-20
“It’s some sort of technological signal. The question is whether it’s Earth technology or technology from somewhere out yonder,” said Sofia Sheikh, a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University leading a team studying the signal and trying to decipher its origin. She is part of Breakthrough Listen, a $100 million effort funded by Yuri Milner, a Russian billionaire investor, to find alien radio waves. The project has now stumbled on its most intriguing pay dirt yet.

Thursday, November 26, 2020

Mystery Signal From Deep Space, Nick-Named 'WOW' May Have Answer

WOW Signal


     Amateur astronomer and YouTuber Alberto Caballero, one of the founders of The Exoplanets Channel, has found a small amount of evidence for a source of the notorious Wow! signal. In his paper uploaded to the arXiv preprint server, Caballero
By Bob Yirka
Phys.org
11-24-20
describes searching the Gaia database for possible sun-like stars that might host an exoplanet capable of supporting intelligent life.

Thursday, March 05, 2020

SETI@Home Is Over; Search for Alien Life Continues

SETI@Home Is Over; Search for Alien Life Continues


Although the public part of the worldwide experiment is coming to an end this month, the world’s greatest extraterrestrial hunt is far from finished.
     In 1995, the computer scientist David Gedye had an idea that could only originate at a cocktail party. What if the world’s personal computers were linked together on the internet to create a virtual supercomputer that could help with SETI, the
By Daniel Oberhaus
Wired.com
3-3-20
search for extraterrestrial intelligence? The network would be able to sort through the massive amounts of data being collected by radio telescopes, seeking signals that might point to an alien civilization around another star. A distributed supercomputer sounded outlandish at the time, but within four years, Gedye and his collaborators had built the software to make it a reality. They called it SETI@home.

On Tuesday, researchers at the Berkeley SETI Research Center announced they would stop distributing new data to SETI@home users at the end of March. It marks the culmination of an unprecedented 20-year experiment that engaged millions of people from almost every country on earth.

Tuesday, January 07, 2020

'Aliens Exist,' says First British Astronaut



'Aliens Exist,' Says First British Astronaut

     Aliens exist and they could be living among us, the first British astronaut into space has said.

Dr Helen Sharman, who went into space 28 years ago, said it is
By Verity Bowman
www.telegraph.co.uk
1-6-20
without a doubt that “all sorts of forms of life” are alive in the universe - but perhaps we “simply can’t see them” as they are so different to humanity.

Sunday, December 22, 2019

Unexplained Lights Could Be Extraterrestrial Communication



Unexplained Lights Could Be Extraterrestrials' Communication

     If the truth is out there, it might be one we can't yet explain.

Researchers are having trouble explaining how to identify the number of flickering lights that have been observed over the
By Chris Ciaccia
Fox News
12-17-19
past several decades. A new study published in the Astronomical Journal suggested they could be from a technologically advanced civilization using "interstellar communication lasers."

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Will 2020 Be the Year We Find Intelligent Alien Life?



Will 2020 Be the Year We Find Intelligent Alien Life?

     In the past three decades, scientists have found more than 4,000 exoplanets. And the discoveries will keep rolling in; observations suggest that every star in the Milky Way galaxy hosts more than one planet on average.

By Leonard David
www.space.com
11-26-19
Given a convergence of ground- and space-based capability, artificial intelligence/machine learning research and other tools, are we on the verge of identifying what is universally possible for life — or perhaps even confirming the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence?

Sunday, May 19, 2019

Scientific Community Making Search For UFOs Mainstream



Scientific Community Making Search For UFOs Mainstream

     The search for extraterrestrial activity is getting some credibility.

Notable scientists are getting behind a push to make contact with whatever might be out there.
By newyork.cbslocal.com
5-17-19

[...]

... today, this search for answers has gone mainstream. Prestigious universities including Harvard and Penn State are dedicating some of their brightest minds to this as a new field of study.

Thursday, January 31, 2019

The Hunt for Alien Technology 'Should' Be an Official Goal, say Scientists

The Hunt for Alien Technology 'Should' Be an Official Goal, say Scientists

     Long an underfunded, fringe field of science, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence may be ready to go mainstream.

Astronomer Jason Wright is determined to see that happen. At
By Lisa Grossman
www.sciencenews.org
1-28-19
a meeting in Seattle of the American Astronomical Society in January, Wright convened “a little ragtag group in a tiny room” to plot a course for putting the scientific field, known as SETI, on NASA’s agenda.

The group is writing a series of papers arguing that scientists should be searching the universe for “technosignatures” — any sign of alien technology, from radio signals to waste heat. The hope is that those papers will go into a report to Congress at the end of 2020 detailing the astronomical community’s priorities. That report, Astro 2020: Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics, will determine which telescopes fly and which studies receive federal funding through the next decade.

Friday, January 11, 2019

New Mysterious Radio Bursts From Deep Space, Is It Aliens?

New Mysterious Radio Bursts From Deep Space, Is It Aliens?

Mysterious fast radio bursts from deep space ‘could be aliens’

     Astronomers have detected mysterious, ultra-brief repeating energy bursts from deep space for only the second time in history, and some experts suggested they could be evidence of advanced alien life.
By Mattha Busby
The Guardian
1-9-19

The origin of fast radio bursts (FRBs), millisecond-long pulses of radio waves, is unknown, but most scientists say they are generated by powerful astrophysical phenomena emanating from billions of light years outside our galaxy, the Milky Way – such as black holes or super-dense neutron stars merging together.

Some, however, including Prof Avi Loeb, from the Harvard-Smithsonian centre for astrophysics, have posited more outlandish theories, suggesting they could be evidence of incredibly advanced alien technology.

Thursday, December 13, 2018

Search for Aliens Should Be More Aggressive, Says, NASA Scientist

Search for Aliens Should Be More Aggressive, Says, NASA Scientist
Experts may have been too quick to discount
the possibility that alien UFOs have paid Earth a visit.
     Is Earth being visited by space aliens? A lot of people think so, although few of them are scientists. Professional researchers are not easily persuaded by eyewitness testimony, blobby photos or claims that evidence for itinerant aliens has been stashed away by a paranoid government.
By Seth Shostak
www.nbcnews.com
12-10-18

Put more succinctly, academia doesn’t put a whole lot of credence in the incessant claims that some of the thousands of UFOs sighted every year are actually alien craft. But at least one scientist has recently gone on record suggesting that the clipboard-carrying crowd should be a little less sure.

Thursday, October 18, 2018

Why We Haven't Found Aliens

Why We Haven't Found Aliens

     Where are all the aliens? For decades, humans have searched for artificial signals, yet the skies above remain silent. But new research suggests that researchers' investigations have so far not been particularly exhaustive; if the total
By Adam Mann
Live Science
10-16-18
possible search space were equivalent to the all the water in Earth's oceans, we have examined only a hot tub's worth of volume.

[...]

The findings support those who argue that "the Great Silence" is merely an artifact of our limited investigations. "Bright and obvious radio beacons might be quite common in the sky, but we would not know it yet, because our search completeness to date is so low," the authors wrote in the paper.

Thursday, May 17, 2018

New Search for Aliens May Be Funded By Congress


      A climate denier from Texas may be the reason the S-word is back in vogue in Congress. Oh yeah, not that S-word, the other one: SETI.
By Jeanna Bryner
Live Science
5-10-18

That's right, Congress is talking about spending a bunch of money on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (or SETI) for the first time in 25 years.

The U.S. House of Representatives has proposed a bill that includes $10 million in NASA funding for the next two years "to search for technosignatures, such as radio transmissions, in order to meet the NASA objective to search for life's origin, evolution, distribution, and future in the universe." ...

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Exomoons May Support Life

Life Outside Our Solar System Might Exist on Exomoons

     The discovery of an exomoon could be years away, but researchers are already theorizing the conditions under which liquid water might be found on their surfaces.
By Elizabeth Howell
www.seeker.com
3-27-17
As some scientists search for habitable planets outside our solar system, other researchers are tackling a similar question for the moons of these planets. So-called exomoons have yet to be found outside our solar system, and a detection could be a decade away - or more.

Monday, August 07, 2017

Finding Proof of Space Aliens, What Happens Next?

Finding Proof of Space Aliens, What Happens Next?

Protocols for responding to the discovery of extraterrestrial
intelligence have been created, but they might not be followed.

     First came the suggestion that an “alien megastructure” had been observed around KIC 8462852, a.k.a. Tabby’s Star. Months later, people were talking about a signal seen by a Russian telescope that some thought was transmitted from the environs of a stellar cousin of
By Seth Shostak
NBC News
8-1-17
the sun. And not long after that, the Cyclopean Arecibo antenna in Puerto Rico reported weird signals that seemed to come from the dwarf star Ross 128, a scant 11 light-years away.

[...]

These three claims purporting to show the existence of aliens haven’t panned out. But what happens if some future claim does? What preparations are in place to deal with the discovery of a radio signal or a laser flash that would prove beyond doubt that we have cosmic compeers? Does the government have a plan? Does anyone?

[...]

... Back in 1989, when a now-defunct NASA program to search for extraterrestrial intelligence was gaining steam, protocols were drafted to spell out best practices in case the search proved successful. These were later updated and streamlined by the International Academy of Astronautics SETI Permanent Committee. (Click here to see the revised protocols.)