Lifeboat Foundation

When searching for signs of life in the Universe, we tend to look for very specific things, based on what we know: a planet like Earth, in orbit around a star, and at a distance that allows liquid surface water. But there could, conceivably, be other forms of life out there that look like nothing that we have ever imagined before.

Just as we have extremophiles here on Earth — organisms that live in the most extreme and seemingly inhospitable environments the planet has to offer — so too could there be extremophiles out there in the wider Universe.

For instance, species that can form, evolve, and thrive in the interiors of stars. According to new research by physicists Luis Anchordoqui and Eugene Chudnovsky of The City University of New York, such a thing is indeed — hypothetically, at least — possible.

A new exciting life detection toolset for exploration of an alien planet or moon.

Life detection on Mars and the icy moons of the outer Solar System looks more and more feasible.

A comprehensive review of life as we know it—and may not know it.

In a new paper just published in the journal Universe, Louis Irwin and I attempt to sum up scientists’ current understanding of life “as we know it,” and speculate how life may look and function on alien planets and moons. That includes potential biospheres very different from our own, such as a rocky planet with an ice-covered global ocean. Or it might be a barren planet devoid of surface liquids, or a frigid world with abundant liquid hydrocarbons. It could even be a rogue planet with no “host” star, a tidally locked planet, or a so-called Super-Earth. Maybe the biosphere exists only in the planet’s atmosphere.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=VnwttF7uv1I

The first two episodes will be directed by Ridley Scott, who has a history of producing grandiose, high-concept, philosophical sci-fi (see: Prometheus and Alien Covenant) as well as treatises on religious tribalism (like in Kingdom of Heaven).

The visual spectacle aims to be a think piece on the role of faith in civilization.

Continue reading “Ridley Scott is back to making operatic sci-fi in new Raised by Wolves trailer” »

Oumuamua is an interstellar object that reached the solar system two years back. It showed unusual acceleration in its course across space, which led scientists to believe it could be a probe from another planet or even extraterrestrials. What it is.

Why it’s important

Oumuamua, from the very first day of its discovery, literally perplexed scientists, as it showed an unusual acceleration in its course across space. Now, in a new study report published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Loeb and Thiem Hoang, an astrophysicist at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, has claimed that the hydrogen hypothesis will not work in the real world, which means there could be still a scope that advanced aliens from deep space might have visited the solar system.

Continue reading “Oumuamua Could be Alien Probe as New Study Rules Out Alternative Explanation” »

Pleased to welcome author and NPR commentator Adam Frank, a professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester in upstate New York. He is author of the 2018 WW Norton title “Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth.” Frank and colleagues just recently received a NASA grant to hunt for the signatures of advanced alien technology within our galaxy. Stay tuned.

Is there life on a distant planet? One way astronomers are trying to find out is by analyzing the light that is scattered off a planet’s atmosphere. Some of that light, which originates from the stars it orbits, has interacted with its atmosphere, and provides important clues to the gases it contains. If gases like oxygen, methane or ozone are detected, that could indicate the presence of living organisms. Such gases are known as biosignatures. A team of scientists from EPFL and Tor Vergata University of Rome has developed a statistical model that can help astronomers interpret the results of the search for these “signs of life.” Their research has just been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Since the first exoplanet—a planet that orbits a star other than the sun—was discovered 25 years ago, over 4,300 more have been identified. And the list is still growing: a new one is discovered every two or three days. Around 200 of the exoplanets found so far are telluric, meaning they consist mainly of rocks, like the Earth. While that’s not the only requirement for a planet to be able to host life—it also needs to have water and be a certain distance from its sun—it is one criterion that astronomers are using to focus their search.

In the coming years, the use of gas spectroscopy to detect biosignatures in planets’ atmospheres will become an increasingly important element of astronomy. Many research programs are already under way in this area, such as for the CHEOPS exoplanet-hunting satellite, which went into orbit in December 2019, and the James-Webb optical telescope, scheduled to be launched in October 2021.

The Universe or any other phenomenon or entity contained therein is not objectively real but subjectively real. Patterns of information emerging from the ultimate code are what is more fundamental than particles of matter or space-time continuum itself all of which is levels below the Code. Nature behaves quantum code-theoretically at all levels. It’s hierarchies of quantum networks all the way down and all the way up. Being part of hierarchical quantum neural networks, a conscious observer system possesses a strange quality: collapsing quantum states of entangled conscious entities and having a privileged interpretation of that. From this perspective, entangled conscious agents would be a mirror conscious environment, whereas the quantum observer would be a central node of the entangled network.

“If we accept that the material universe as we know it is not a mechanical system but a virtual reality created by Absolute Consciousness through an infinitely complex orchestration of experiences, what are the practical consequences of this insight?” –Stanislav Grof

Just like absolute idealism, solipsism certainly defies our common sense but the deeper layer of truth is not what first meets the eye. Here’s what Richard Conn Henry and Stephen Palmquist write in their paper “An Experimental Test of Non-local Realism” (2007): “Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.” One can extend their line of reasoning by arriving at pantheistic solipsism as a likely revelation to ponder about.

Continue reading “Philosophical Insights on Universal Consciousness and Evolving Phenomenal Mind” »

Aside from tracking asteroids that could endanger the planet, the telescope played a major role in the “SETI” program — the search for intelligent life. It was notably used by astronomer Carl Sagan to send an interstellar message.

Earlier this week, the facility was forced to close down after a cable supporting a metal platform above the telescope fell, tearing a 100-foot gash in its giant reflector dish.

“The cable didn’t really break in the sense of a cable kind of snapping, but it just sort of slipped from its socket, which is you know, an even weirder condition,” Arecibo Observatory Director Francisco Cordova told CBS News’ Jeff Glor.