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Scientists: We are not ready for the arrival of aliens

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Researchers from Scotland’s University of St. Andrews and the British SETI research network will jointly develop procedures in the event that a signal from an alien civilization hits Earth.

According to the coordinator of the newly formed team, “aliens” can contact us “at any time”, and Earthlings are not prepared for this event. “It’s high time,” says Dr. John Elliott.

Scientists at a British university have warned that an extraterrestrial civilization could contact the inhabitants of Earth “at any moment”. Researchers are of the opinion that when beings from other parts of the Universe appear, you will need to know what to say to them.

The Scottish University of St. Andrews has teamed up with the UK’s SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) research network to establish procedures that could be used should an epochal moment arrive, reports The Telegraph.

The newly established SETI Post-Detection Hub will bring together experts from around the world to determine methods for deciphering possible signals, develop space law and predict the social impact of terrestrial contact.

‘We don’t know if we’ll ever get a message from extraterrestrial intelligence,’ said Dr John Elliott of the St Andrews School of Computer Science and coordinator of the new team. However, he believes that Earthlings cannot afford to be poorly prepared.

So far, the only procedures in the case of human contact with “aliens” date back to 1989 and were prepared by participants of the SETI program. These procedures have not been updated since 2010.

The 2010 symposium “The Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life and Its Consequences for Science and Society”, organized by the British Royal Society, did not help to reach an agreement on how to deal with contact.

The main problem will be the language

In the recent BBC documentary ‘First Contact: Encountering an Alien’, scientists admitted that it may never be possible to understand what the aliens will want to tell our civilization.

The issue of deciphering the extraterrestrial language may be one of the main hurdles that experts will need to consider.

Dr. Aleksander Rehding, a professor of music at Harvard University, believes that it will be even more difficult because people still have trouble understanding animals.

“Whales are a very good research object, and in some ways the closest thing to the ‘aliens’ on Earth,” says Rehding.

He emphasizes that the form of vocalization used by marine mammals has still not been explained.

“We don’t know what it’s for. Whether it’s music or language” – explains the professor, suggesting that it may give an idea of ​​​​the difficulty that the world of science will face when “aliens” talk to us.

“We cannot intelligently talk to most creatures on Earth. How will we communicate with intelligent civilizations? I’m not sure we’ll ever understand them”, says William Borucki, a former NASA expert.

He added that reality will certainly not resemble Hollywood movies, where talking to aliens is easy, and people and aliens have “similar ambitions and similar reactions”.

“The Telegraph” reminds that for many scientists intelligent life in other regions of the universe is already quite a real possibility.

In turn, NASA recently launched an investigation to investigate hundreds of unexplained UFO sighting reports. The investigation is expected to last eight months, with a report scheduled for next summer.

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Extraterrestrial life may be hiding in “terminator zones”

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In a study published in the Astrophysical Journal, astrophysicists set out to find out if exoplanets could support life.

Astronomers have come to the conclusion that on the surface of some exoplanets there is a strip that may contain water, necessary for the existence of biological life. The terminator zone is the dividing line between the day and night sides of an exoplanet.

Many exoplanets are planets outside the solar system held by gravity. This means that one side of the planet is always facing the star they orbit, while the other side is in constant darkness.

The water on the dark side will most likely be in a frozen state, while on the light side it will be so hot that the water should just evaporate.

The terminator zone would be a “friendly place” – neither too hot nor too cold – in which liquid water could support extraterrestrial life.

Dr. Ana Lobo of the University of California, said: “The day side can be scalding hot, much uninhabitable, while the night side will be icy, potentially covered in ice. You need a planet that’s the right temperature for liquid water.”

“We’re trying to draw attention to planets with more limited amounts of water that, despite not having widespread oceans, might have lakes or other smaller bodies of liquid water, and that climate could actually be very promising.”

“By exploring these exotic climate states, we are improving our chances of finding and correctly identifying a habitable planet in the near future.”

The researchers created a model of their climate by analyzing different temperatures, wind patterns and radiative forcing, and found the “correct” zone on exoplanets that could contain life-supporting liquid water.

Researchers who are looking for life on exoplanets will now take into account the fact that it can hide in certain areas.

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Astronomers discover the strongest evidence for another Universe before the Big Bang

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The notion of the Big Bang goes back nearly 100 years, when the first evidence for the expanding Universe appeared.

If the Universe is expanding and cooling today, that implies a past that was smaller, denser, and hotter. In our imaginations, we can extrapolate back to arbitrarily small sizes, high densities, and hot temperatures: all the way to a singularity, where all of the Universe’s matter and energy was condensed in a single point. 

For many decades, these two notions of the Big Bang — of the hot dense state that describes the early Universe and the initial singularity — were inseparable.

But beginning in the 1970s, scientists started identifying some puzzles surrounding the Big Bang, noting several properties of the Universe that weren’t explainable within the context of these two notions simultaneously. 

When cosmic inflation was first put forth and developed in the early 1980s, it separated the two definitions of the Big Bang, proposing that the early hot, dense state never achieved these singular conditions, but rather that a new, inflationary state preceded it. 

There really was a Universe before the hot Big Bang, and some very strong evidence from the 21st century truly proves that it’s so.

Although we’re certain that we can describe the very early Universe as being hot, dense, rapidly expanding, and full of matter-and-radiation — i.e., by the hot Big Bang — the question of whether that was truly the beginning of the Universe or not is one that can be answered with evidence. 

The differences between a Universe that began with a hot Big Bang and a Universe that had an inflationary phase that precedes and sets up the hot Big Bang are subtle, but tremendously important. After all, if we want to know what the very beginning of the Universe was, we need to look for evidence from the Universe itself.

Read the full article here.

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