DailyDirt: All Alone In The Universe With Nowhere To Go...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

People have been looking up into the sky for centuries, wondering what's out there and if we're alone on this world. Astronomers, more recently, have been looking into deep space with some relatively high-tech equipment -- finding some strangely inexplicable phenomena (that could be alien megastructures?!) and still wondering if we're alone in the universe. We may never know for sure if intelligent life exists anywhere else, but it doesn't hurt to look, does it? After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: alien megastructures, aliens, astrobiology, astronomy, breakthrough prize foundation, et, exoplanets, extraterrestrial life, kepler space telescope, life, lightsail, nanocraft, seti, spacecraft, telescopes, trappist


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    Pixelation, 17 May 2016 @ 5:55pm

    "The Breakthrough Prize Foundation is aiming to shoot lasers at a light-propelled nanocraft that could reach Alpha Centauri"

    Now if only we could capture some space sharks to mount lasers on...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    orbitalinsertion (profile), 17 May 2016 @ 6:23pm

    First contact: Killed by kinetic weapon.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 17 May 2016 @ 6:28pm

    The TRAPPIST Project

    Small red-dwarf stars probably outnumber other kinds of stars, including our Sun. Trouble is, being so dim, they’re much harder to see.

    Also, being so dim, their “goldilocks zone” (the region in which water could exist in liquid form on a planetary surface) is much closer in.

    On the bright side (so to speak), this means that, if they have planets similar in mass and (probable) surface temperature to our Earth, they are much easier to spot, for 2 reasons:

    • Proportionately greater perturbation on the orbit of a smaller-mass star
    • Even greater perturbation because they are closer to the star.


    Which makes you wonder why they didn’t start searching for planets around such stars sooner...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    JoeCool (profile), 17 May 2016 @ 6:56pm

    Re:

    This project makes no sense at all. Even if it works, it does nothing useful. It's too small to hold a transmitter to send back any data, and there's no way for it to turn around...

    For that matter, all it would do is fly past Alpha Centauri at 100 million mph. The only thing this craft would do is be a menace to anyone else along the path it follows.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. icon
    Mason Wheeler (profile), 18 May 2016 @ 8:29am

    Re: The TRAPPIST Project

    ...because, as you just pointed out, they're much harder to see? (I don't actually know anything about the subject, but that seems like an obvious reason.)

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.