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Extraterrestrial life

Transcension hypothesis: The aliens live at the nanoscale and are too small for us to see

Recall that shrinking or growing can both be seen as forms of travel. While the Transcension hypothesis has the extraterrestrials traveling away from us by shrinking, it is also possible to travel away by growing rapidly. Some religious writers, like C.S. Lewis, picture Hell as a very tiny place. Those who escape it simply grow far beyond its scale. Read More ›

The Privileged Planet, Redux

We’ve all heard about the fine-tuning of physical constants–just change them ever so slightly and a different kind of universe emerges. Then, there’s simply our location in our galaxy that allows us to see outwards to the galaxy itself, and beyond. Now, even the radioactivity in the earth’s core seems to be conducive to life. At Phys.Org there is a press release on this paper (behind paywall). “What they found is that if the radiogenic heating is more than the Earth’s, the planet can’t permanently sustain a dynamo, as Earth has done. That happens because most of the thorium and uranium end up in the mantle, and too much heat in the mantle acts as an insulator, preventing the molten Read More ›

Hey, it’s Friday night? Anthropologists get in on “We are NOT alone!”

Of course, there’s the detail of actually finding any extraterrestrial life forms before we all fight viciously for the right to represent them as their agents and, if they are intelligent (but not especially so) get them to sign long-term contracts … ;) Read More ›

Exoplanets made of diamonds?

Researchers: Exoplanets around stars with a higher carbon to oxygen ratio than our sun are more likely to be carbon-rich. They hypothesize that these carbon-rich exoplanets could convert to diamond and silicate, if water (which is abundant in the universe) were present, creating a diamond-rich composition. Read More ›