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aliens

For Writers: Interspecies Warfare

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interspecies warfare - pixabay

FOR WRITERS Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer Jim Comer: Interspeces warfare is portrayed in most SF as being like war between (human) nations.  But wars between species on Earth (such as black and brown rats or between native and Africanized bees) isn’t fought that way, and seldom ends other than with extinction.  Sheffield’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Baxter’s Xeelee series give examples of wars between humans and aliens who range from the damn strange to the totally incomprehensible.  Have you used this concept in your work? If you have, how did characters view it?  What reaction did your readers have? Writers: This is … Read more

SPACE: Is the Drake Equation Useless?

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aliens - pixabay

For the precocious hunter of off-Earth life, the Drake equation is the ever-ready, go-to toolkit for estimating just how (not) lonely humans are in the Milky Way galaxy. The equation was developed by astronomer Frank Drake in 1961 in a slight hurry so that attendees of an upcoming conference would have something to confer about, and it breaks down the daunting question “Are we alone?” into more manageable, bite-size chunks.  The equation starts with some straightforward concepts, such as the rate of star formation and the fraction of stars hosting planets. But it quickly moves into tricky terrain, asking for numbers like … Read more

Have Aliens Already Visited Earth? – Live Science

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ufo - pixabay

Fox News published a startling article Monday (Dec. 3) with the headline “NASA scientist says Earth may have been visited by aliens.” Unsurprisingly, that news rocketed around the web, with similar articles soon turning up in the New York Post, Russia Today and The Daily Wire. (Fox appears to have been the first major U.S. news source to run with the story.) These articles are based on a document on NASA’s website by Silvano Colombano, a researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. It really does argue that scientists should at least take seriously the notion that … Read more

SPACE: Where Is Everybody?

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Out There - Mike Wall

In 1950, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi — who led the team that created the first-ever nuclear reactor, the inadequately named Chicago Pile-1 — and a few of his colleagues were discussing UFOs during their lunch break. The conversation prompted Fermi to ask his companions, “Where is everybody?” [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Aliens] Fermi meant that the lack of visits by ET is distinctly odd. The Milky Way harbors hundreds of billions of stars and is about 13 billion years old, so there has been plenty of time and opportunity for alien civilizations to rise and spread throughout the … Read more

SCIENCE: Using Lasers to Guide Aliens to Earth – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

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Earth Laser - MIT News

We could build a laser that could send signals to extraterrestrial intelligence. Not we as in the staff of Live Science. (That’s probably beyond our skill set.) But we as in humanity. A new paper published yesterday (Nov. 5) in The Astrophysical Journal has found that humanity could feasibly build an infrared laser hot and bright enough that — if we shined it directly at nearby exoplanets — alien astronomers should be able to detect it using sky-watching technology not too much more advanced than our own. (Presuming they’re out there, of course.) [9 Strange, Scientific Excuses for Why We … Read more

SPACE: Is Killer Ice Knocking Off Alien Life Forms?

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ice - pixabay

There’s a new kind of ice. It forms at speeds of more than 1,000 mph (1,600 km/h), it lies deep beneath our feet, it could destroy hopes for alien life, and — finally — scientists understand how it works. Back in March, researchers writing in the journal Science revealed that they have found the first evidence for this ice, called “Ice VII.” Scientists had predicted its existence beforehand. Under the right conditions, it was believed, ice could form in a pool of water without a layer of heat at the leading edge of its growing surface. That — along with … Read more

SPACE: We’re Not Looking Hard Enough for Aliens. Really.

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radio telescope - pixabay

Where are all the aliens? For decades, humans have searched for artificial signals, yet the skies above remain silent. But new research suggests that researchers’ investigations have so far not been particularly exhaustive; if the total possible search space were equivalent to the all the water in Earth’s oceans, we have examined only a hot tub’s worth of volume. In many movies, the galaxy teems with intelligent life-forms who zip around on spaceships and produce other obvious signs of their existence. In reality, programs like the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have encountered no noticeable transmissions from another species. That … Read more

SPACE: Fast Radio Bursts Could Be Signs of Alien Life. Or Not.

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radio telescope - pixabay

Earth is being bombarded with invisible light that nobody understands. Known as fast radio bursts (or FRBs), these ultrashort, ultrapowerful pulses of ancient energy are the universe’s brightest flashes you cannot see. They travel billions of light-years across time and space, shine with the intensity of nearly 100 suns and then blip out of existence mere milliseconds after reaching the range of Earthly telescopes. Because they are radio waves, they do all of this while remaining totally invisible to human eyes. Could these mystery pulses be the distant flashes of supermassive supernovas? The wild spin of the universe’s speediest neutron … Read more

ANNOUNCEMENT/GIVEAWAY: Aliens, Smith and Jones, by Blaine D. Arden

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Aliens Smith and Jones - Blaine D. Arden

Blaine D. Arden has a new MM sci fi book out: “It’s not all about serving coffee and typing reports.” Working for a secret organisation specialising in alien cover-ups, Connor Smith is no stranger to the abnormal or dangerous. His love life on the other hand… not so exciting. Until he reluctantly agrees to a blind date and meets the perfect bloke, Jason. Things are finally falling into place for Connor, so of course that’s when he attracts an alien stalker. Noah Jones, ex-alien, has been stranded on Earth and forced to live as a human since 1648. Alone and … Read more