DailyDirt: Aliens Aren't Coming To Visit Anytime Soon, But...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The search for aliens has been pretty fruitless so far, but that doesn't mean we should give up on it. Sure, there's little evidence that points to us ever finding aliens beyond our solar system -- and no way that we'll ever interact with distant aliens given the vastness of space and that darn speed of light limitation. However, if we can find some sign that we're not alone, that would be quite a remarkable discovery that could inspire us to greater goals, knowing that someone else is out there to impress or something? Or it would just be cool to be able to build a Dyson sphere of our own.

• KIC 8462852 is the name of a star system that has unusual features -- with explanations saying that it's a star surrounded by a strange field of debris, to more outlandish suggestions that an alien megastructure (perhaps a partial Dyson sphere) exists. A Dyson sphere (or a Dyson swarm) is a massive technological construction that would allow an extremely advanced civilization to harness an enormous amount of energy from a star. This is far from conclusive evidence for aliens, but it would certainly be a significant discovery if all the more mundane explanations don't pan out. [url]
• Instead of looking for messages from aliens, some folks are looking for evidence of ancient ruins in space. Interstellar archaeologists might find aliens on the Kardashev Scale with unnatural amounts of pollution or other anomalous space objects that might be detected. [url]
• Abiogenesis must have happened at least once here on Earth, right? If we could find some evidence that it's happened here more than once, though, that might improve the odds of life existing elsewhere in the universe. [url]

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Filed Under: aliens, dyson sphere, extraterrestrial life

DailyDirt: To Seek Out New Life And New Civilizations...

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The search for extraterrestrial life hasn't yielded much evidence that there's anyone else out there. We could be looking in the wrong places or not looking with the right instruments to detect faint signals -- or maybe we're actually alone. But as they say with the lottery, you can't win if you don't play, so we won't find any aliens if we don't continue looking. (Assuming that aliens aren't already on their way to come and get us.)

• If Dyson spheres actually exist (we're not talking about vacuum cleaners here), they might be harder to detect than previously thought. A Dyson sphere around a white dwarf star might be feasible if an advanced civilization figures out how to survive the red giant and supernova stages of a star -- or travel to an existing white dwarf. [url]
• There are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, and tens of billions with planets in a "Goldilocks' zone" where we think life as we know it could exist. Endless speculation doesn't really explain why we haven't seen any evidence of life yet, but it's fun to try to guess what's going on with aliens and what they might look like. [url]
• Optimists in the space sciences predict that we'll find evidence of alien life forms in the next few decades. We may continue to find evidence that habitable conditions exist elsewhere in the universe, but actually finding life could take a bit longer. [url]

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Filed Under: aliens, astrobiology, dyson sphere, extraterrestrial life, fermi paradox, goldilocks zone, seti

DailyDirt: Searching For Life Forms

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Discovering an alien life form would be quite an achievement, but we've been burned before by over-eager press releases that claimed to find evidence of life from beyond our planet. NASA might be more careful about making any announcements about life based on peculiar and potentially extra-terrestrial-based life, but NASA seemed to have forgotten about the extraordinary claims over ALH84001. Overall, though, it's probably good that NASA hasn't given up on searching for aliens, so here are a few links on looking for life from outer space.

• Recently, some UK scientists claimed to find evidence of alien life in the Earth's upper atmosphere, suggesting that alien life is just raining down from space all the time. The concept of panspermia is interesting, but the evidence for it isn't quite convincing yet. [url]
• There are a bunch of ways to look for aliens, such as a search for extraterrestrial technology (SETT) to find non-natural shapes in space. Looking for alien crop circles on exoplanets ain't easy, though. [url]
• Some astronomers are looking for evidence of Dyson Spheres -- a massive array solar panels that advanced alien civilizations might use for sustaining enormous energy needs. This search is actually being funded by a grant from the Templeton Foundation. [url]
• NASA's Curiosity rover hasn't detected much methane in the Martian atmosphere, so the odds of finding familiar living organisms seems a bit more distant. Mars was most likely suitable for Earth-like life at some point, but it's looking pretty dead right now. [url]

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Filed Under: alh84001, aliens, astrobiology, biology, curiosity, dyson sphere, et, extraterrestrial, life, mars, nasa, seti, sett, templeton foundation