Sep 14, 2023 05:19 PM
Could we find aliens terraforming other worlds?
https://www.universetoday.com/163136/cou...er-worlds/
EXCERPTS: ... While much of humanity’s technological effect on Earth’s biosphere is accidental, it won’t always be. Eventually, if humanity can become a successful, long-duration civilization, we’ll purposefully use technology to manage the biosphere in comprehensive and advantageous ways. Think geoengineering, for example. We may be forced to use it to cool the Earth. But if we last long enough, the Earth will eventually enter another extensive glacial period, and we’ll have to figure out how to keep our planet warm.
[...] A new article leans on the word biotechnosphere a lot, pointing out that a biotechnosphere will affect planetary evolution, and that it could be both a biosignature and a technosignature—a biotechnosignature—in the hunt for other Extraterrestrial Intelligences (ETIs.)
The article “Planetary biotechnospheres, biotechnosignatures and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence” appears in the International Journal of Astrobiology. The author is Irina Romanovskaya, a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Houston College. Romanovskaya is the author of several articles discussing ETIs.
The article is chock-full of interesting ideas. The basic premise is that as a civilization matures, the coupling of the biosphere with technology is nearly inevitable. Genetic engineering of simple lifeforms would be widespread, and a collective intelligence would emerge that’s a combination of intelligent technologies and intelligent lifeforms. Once that’s set in motion, the biotechnosphere is well-established. And from there, it’ll likely spread.
“Space exploration can expand biotechnospheres beyond planets and create cosmic ecosystems encompassing planets and other cosmic objects; biotechnospheres, spacecraft and the environments of near-planetary, interplanetary space or interstellar space,” Romanovskaya writes.
All that activity should create detectable effects. These are biotechnosignatures, and in her article, the author presents ten examples of them. Engineered life forms play a critical role in her examples because Romanovskaya predicts that there’ll be an inevitable coupling between a civilization that needs to control planetary environments and simple, engineered microbial life the civilization would employ to exercise control... (MORE - missing details)
Astronomers spot the first “bounce” in our Universe
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ai-hype-...d-in-china
INTRO: If you were to look at the Universe on the absolute largest of cosmic scales, you’d find that galaxies cluster together in an enormous web of structure. Individual galaxies form along the threads of the web, with rich groups and clusters of galaxies forming at the nexuses where the threads meet. In between those threads are giant void regions, with far fewer galaxies than average, and some voids that are so deep they seem to harbor no galaxies at all. This web, to the best of our knowledge, is dominated by dark matter’s gravitational effects, but it’s only the normal matter — made of protons, neutrons, and electrons — that winds up forming the stars, gas, and dust that we can observe.
However, there ought to be an extra structural effect that isn’t so easy to see: a clustering feature known as baryon acoustic oscillations. Dating back to the very early stages of cosmic history and caused by normal matter getting “bounced” away from a clustering center, it leaves an imprint that looks a bit like a cosmic bubble: where galaxies are more likely to be found a specific distance away from another rather than slightly closer or farther away. Although this feature has been seen statistically before, no individual “bounce” or “bubble” has ever been seen before.
In a brand new paper, astronomers Brent Tully, Cullan Howlett, and Daniel Pomarède present evidence for the very first individual baryon acoustic oscillation ever discovered in the entire Universe. Here’s the science behind it... (MORE - details)
RELATED (video): Sound Waves from the Beginning of Time
Baryon Acoustic Oscillations ... https://youtu.be/jpXuYc-wzk4
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/jpXuYc-wzk4
https://www.universetoday.com/163136/cou...er-worlds/
EXCERPTS: ... While much of humanity’s technological effect on Earth’s biosphere is accidental, it won’t always be. Eventually, if humanity can become a successful, long-duration civilization, we’ll purposefully use technology to manage the biosphere in comprehensive and advantageous ways. Think geoengineering, for example. We may be forced to use it to cool the Earth. But if we last long enough, the Earth will eventually enter another extensive glacial period, and we’ll have to figure out how to keep our planet warm.
[...] A new article leans on the word biotechnosphere a lot, pointing out that a biotechnosphere will affect planetary evolution, and that it could be both a biosignature and a technosignature—a biotechnosignature—in the hunt for other Extraterrestrial Intelligences (ETIs.)
The article “Planetary biotechnospheres, biotechnosignatures and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence” appears in the International Journal of Astrobiology. The author is Irina Romanovskaya, a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Houston College. Romanovskaya is the author of several articles discussing ETIs.
The article is chock-full of interesting ideas. The basic premise is that as a civilization matures, the coupling of the biosphere with technology is nearly inevitable. Genetic engineering of simple lifeforms would be widespread, and a collective intelligence would emerge that’s a combination of intelligent technologies and intelligent lifeforms. Once that’s set in motion, the biotechnosphere is well-established. And from there, it’ll likely spread.
“Space exploration can expand biotechnospheres beyond planets and create cosmic ecosystems encompassing planets and other cosmic objects; biotechnospheres, spacecraft and the environments of near-planetary, interplanetary space or interstellar space,” Romanovskaya writes.
All that activity should create detectable effects. These are biotechnosignatures, and in her article, the author presents ten examples of them. Engineered life forms play a critical role in her examples because Romanovskaya predicts that there’ll be an inevitable coupling between a civilization that needs to control planetary environments and simple, engineered microbial life the civilization would employ to exercise control... (MORE - missing details)
Astronomers spot the first “bounce” in our Universe
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ai-hype-...d-in-china
INTRO: If you were to look at the Universe on the absolute largest of cosmic scales, you’d find that galaxies cluster together in an enormous web of structure. Individual galaxies form along the threads of the web, with rich groups and clusters of galaxies forming at the nexuses where the threads meet. In between those threads are giant void regions, with far fewer galaxies than average, and some voids that are so deep they seem to harbor no galaxies at all. This web, to the best of our knowledge, is dominated by dark matter’s gravitational effects, but it’s only the normal matter — made of protons, neutrons, and electrons — that winds up forming the stars, gas, and dust that we can observe.
However, there ought to be an extra structural effect that isn’t so easy to see: a clustering feature known as baryon acoustic oscillations. Dating back to the very early stages of cosmic history and caused by normal matter getting “bounced” away from a clustering center, it leaves an imprint that looks a bit like a cosmic bubble: where galaxies are more likely to be found a specific distance away from another rather than slightly closer or farther away. Although this feature has been seen statistically before, no individual “bounce” or “bubble” has ever been seen before.
In a brand new paper, astronomers Brent Tully, Cullan Howlett, and Daniel Pomarède present evidence for the very first individual baryon acoustic oscillation ever discovered in the entire Universe. Here’s the science behind it... (MORE - details)
RELATED (video): Sound Waves from the Beginning of Time
Baryon Acoustic Oscillations ... https://youtu.be/jpXuYc-wzk4