This story popped up yesterday, and I can imagine it will go far, since it talks about life in the universe. I get it, it’s what people are interested in, and at least this story is focused on the science of why this is the best place to look for intelligent civilizations, instead of “Oh hey there’s a strange ring of material around a star, must be an alien superstructure.” But I digress. So where is the best place to look for life in the universe? The answer is in a Globular Cluster. A globular cluster is one of the...
Sometimes I love to say ‘I told you so,’ though in the world of science it’s more like ‘I gave you a high probability of this plausible scenario.’ A little while back a story broke about a star called KIC 8462852, with a strange ring of material surrounding it. One potential explanation was that an extraterrestrial civilization has constructed a giant ring to harvest it’s home star’s energy. Though this was one of a dozen possible explanations, it of course gathered the most steam among the general populace. In a statement today, officials from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) confirmed that...
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’ Such is the case with the search for life. Any scientist who finds direct evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life had better be sure. And then once they are sure they had better find too much evidence because people will still not believe them. It’s because alien life would be such a monumental, paradigm-shifting discovery, and our entire way of life and system of beliefs would be compromised. For this reason, I simply shake my head every time I see some sensationalized news article about the ‘potential for...
100,000 Galaxies. Each one contains Billions upon Billions of stars. Each star could have planets, leading to countless possibilities of variation and the potential for life. But would we see the signs of civilization from Earth? Could a highly advanced civilization control the entire population of stars in their galaxy and harness that energy for their industry? Would they alter their stellar environment enough that we could see them? This is exactly the line of questioning that led astronomers to look at over 100,000 different nearby galaxies in mid-infrared emission to see some potential signs of Alien life. In these...
