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posted by
janrinok
on Monday March 03 2014, @01:30AM
from the its-life-Jim-but-not-as-we-know-it dept.
from the its-life-Jim-but-not-as-we-know-it dept.
AnonTechie writes:
"What If We Have Completely Misunderstood Our Place in the Universe ? A Harvard astronomer has a provocative hunch about what happened after the Big Bang. Our universe is about 13 billion years old, and for roughly 3.5 billion of those years, life has been wriggling all over our planet. But what was going on in the universe before that time ? It's possible that there was a period shortly after the Big Bang when the entire universe was teeming with life. Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb calls this period the 'habitable epoch,' and he believes that its existence changes how humans should understand our place in the cosmos. The full article is here"
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Life On Earth Might Not Be So Special After All
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If the thunder don't get you, then the lightning will.
(Score: 1) by bitshifter on Monday March 03 2014, @04:01PM
Well, if you follow the line of "Sentinel" (and "2001", of course), then this "monitor" will be made hard to find on purpose, as you say, to ensure that the finder is worthy :)
On the other hand, there is now a bubble of radio transmissions with a radius of 100 light years, surrounding the solar system, and growing.
Somebody is bound to notice, sooner or later.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AsteroidMining on Monday March 03 2014, @04:20PM
Yes.
As for "hard to find," consider trying to find something like this - a probe made of condensed quark matter placed at the center of the Earth, looking for signs of neutrino production from nuclear power (we now generate lots) and communicating back to HQ by beamed neutrinos (condensed quark matter is basically opaque to neutrinos, and so would make neutrino communication possible). And, that is just something I can come up with. I would expect a multi-billion year old civilization to do substantially better.
(Score: 1) by Woods on Monday March 03 2014, @05:16PM
Communication via neutrino emission, how very clever. Apparently, some American scientists have already started on this, and have successfully sent a short message "Neutrino" through 237 meters (2.2 football fields) of bedrock.
Though, the method requires a particle accelerator, and a massive detector, I am sure eventually we will figure out how to get it whittled down to something much more manageable.
(Score: 1) by bitshifter on Monday March 03 2014, @05:26PM
OK. So assuming that assuming neutrinos travel at the speed of light, the bubble of neutrinos has a radius of 69 light years, from the time of the the first atomic tests...