Tag: seti
Proxima Centauri radio signal intercepted, now under study (news).
Well, this is almost the expected end of 2020… The Guardian Newspaper has just reported in the last hour that a SETI-style scientific initiative called the Breakthrough Initiative, is now analysing multiple tantalising radio signals that originated from a planet, the third world of the Proxima Centauri star system – one of our closest neighbours, […]
Wow, what a signal: the time we picked up an alien radio transmission (science video).
Here’s a science documentary on the The Wow! Signal, a strong narrowband radio signal received August 15th, 1977, by Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope. The signal came from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius and bore all the expected hallmarks of an extraterrestrial origin. It still remains the strongest candidate for an alien […]
Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate for 2020: where’s the Alien Life? (science video).
In the exciting Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate for 2020, Neil deGrasse Tyson hosts and moderates a lively discussion about how life might have formed on Earth and explores what alien life might look like elsewhere in the universe. What criteria do we use to classify life as we know it? Should the criteria be revised […]
Is there life on Venus? (science video)
Researchers from Cardiff University and MIT just published a paper in Nature in which they claim to have found phosphine, a possible biosignature, in the clouds of Venus’ atmosphere. David Grinspoon, astrobiologist, and Nathalie Cabrol of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute, chat about the exciting new possibility of life on Venus.
No signs of alien technology in 10 million scanned star systems (science news).
Astronomers have just used the Murchison Widefield Array telescope to explore hundreds of times more broadly than any previous search for extraterrestrial life. The study, published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, observed the sky around the Vela constellation. But in this part of the Universe at least, it appears other civilisations […]
The eerie silence? SETI discussion (video).
A technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilization could likely detect life on Earth if such beings exist. Life on Earth would be detectable in our planet’s atmospheric spectral lines for over a billion years. Most of our atmospheric oxygen is due to life, and can be observed over interstellar distances — across thousands of light-years. Over this […]
SETI expands hunt for alien life in the stars with Very Large Array (news).
Emerging technologies and new strategies are opening a new era in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence … aka SETI. New discovery capabilities, along with the rapidly-expanding number of known planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, are spurring innovative approaches by both government and private organisations, according to a panel of experts speaking at a […]
Astronomers to sweep, while Pentagon leaks (UFO news).
Two interesting stories drop across the SFcrowsnest desk thanks to our national newspapers. In the first story, astronomers are now sweeping the entire sky for signs of extraterrestrial life as part of a collaboration between a privately-funded firm and the New Mexico Observatory. In the second story, the Pentagon’s classified UFO program run out of […]
The Drake Equation examined (science video).
The Drake equation provides a rough estimate of the number of civilisations in our galaxy … so where is ET and why have we yet to come across them? In this 35 minute science video, Ian Crawford, professor of planetary science and astrobiology at Birkbeck, University of London, examines what known variables we can now […]
Why intelligent life could be hiding out there in the galaxy (and probably is) (science documentary).
Answering the question of are we alone has turned out to be a bit more difficult than was originally envisioned when SETI first began decades ago. At first it was a matter of looking for giant omni-directional beacons blasting out high energy messages, much like what we saw in the movie contact. But as we’ve […]
