Lifeboat Foundation

Some thoughts about the genetic code aliens would use in the 2nd part of the series: The Science of Aliens:

Alien life would likely have different biochemistry, which may change the way it reproduces.

A rare glimpse of a star before it exploded in a fiery supernova looks nothing like astronomers expected, a new study suggests.

Images from the Hubble Space Telescope reveal that a relatively cool, puffy star ended its life in a hydrogen-free supernova. Until now, supernovas without hydrogen were thought to originate only from extremely hot, compact stars.

The discovery “is a very important test case for stellar evolution,” says Sung-Chul Yoon, an astrophysicist at Seoul National University in South Korea, who was not involved in the work. Theorists have some ideas about how massive stars behave right before they blow up, but such hefty stars are scant in the local universe and many are nowhere near ready to go supernova, Yoon says. Retroactively identifying the star responsible for a supernova provides an opportunity to test scenarios of how stars evolve right before exploding.

Scientists believe these photos show mushrooms on mars—and proof of life.

Could there be mushrooms on Mars? In a new paper, an international team of scientists from countries including the U.S., France, and China have gathered and compared photographic evidence they claim shows fungus-like objects growing on the Red Planet.

Debris from an out-of-control Chinese rocket likely plunged into the Indian Ocean, just west of the Maldives, on Saturday night ET, China’s space agency said.

Most of the huge Long March 5B rocket, however, burned up on reentering the atmosphere, the China Manned Space Engineering Office said in a post on WeChat.

It was unclear if any debris had landed on the atoll nation.

The team went so far as to say that “black fungi-bacteria-like specimens also appeared atop the rovers.”

They didn’t stop there: the team also examined photos taken by NASA’s HiRISE, and found evidence for “amorphous specimens within a crevice” that “changed shape and location then disappeared.”

“It is well established that a variety of terrestrial organisms survive Mars-like conditions,” the team concludes. “Given the likelihood Earth has been seeding Mars with life and life has been repeatedly transferred between worlds, it would be surprising if there was no life on Mars.”

An international collaboration of astronomers led by a researcher from the Astrobiology Center and Queen’s University Belfast, and including researchers from Trinity, has detected a new chemical signature in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet (a planet that orbits a star other than our Sun).

Watch the Webinar “Space Renaissance and Spirituality”, held yesterday April 25th 2021.

The webinar “The Space Renaissance and Spirituality” discusses another, often neglected, primary need of humans: spirituality. Spirituality animated human deep feeelings and culture since the very ancient times of our history on our mother planet, Earth. Spirituality is a feeling that characterizes us, as human beings, and cannot be felt by other sentient but not self-aware and less intelligent species. Spirituality suggests reverence for life and great appreciation for the highest expression of nature: the intelligent life.
The Webinar Series are done in the frame of 2021 Space Renaissance Congress “The Civilian Space Development”.
The panel includes:
- Adriano V. Autino (SRI President and Co-Founder, author of “A greater world is possible!”, trying to develop further the Astronautic Humanism philosophy) 07:41
- Giulio Prisco (blogger and founder of the Turing Church, Hungary) 34:18
- Paul Ziolo (Director of Psychohistory Department, University of Liverpool, UK) 51:37
- Tsvi Bisk (Strategic Futurist, author of Cosmodeism: A Worldview for the Space Age, founder of The Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking, Israel) 01:10:30
- The Cometan (Brandon R. Taylorian, founder of the Astronism channel, UK) 01:27:32
- Steven Wolfe (Founder of Beyond Earth Institute, author of “The Obligation ”, evolutionist philosopher, USA) 01:47:26
- Alberto Cavallo (SRI Co-Founder, Buddhist, Engineer, Scholar of Philosophy, Italy) 02:01:05
Moderates: Giulio Prisco.

Continue reading “Space Renaissance and Spirituality — April 25th 2021” »

Rees explained how his astronomy background meshes with his concern for humanity’s fate:

People often ask does being an astronomer have any effect on one’s attitude toward these things. I think it does in a way, because it makes us aware of the long-range future. We’re aware that it’s taken about 4 billion years for life to evolve from simple beginnings to our biosphere of which we are a part, but we also know that the sun is less than halfway through its life and the universe may go on forever. So we are not the culmination of evolution. Post-humans are going to have far longer to evolve. We can’t conceive what they’d be like, but if life is a rarity in the universe, then, of course, the stakes are very high if we snuff things out this century.

Bottom line: From nuclear weapons to biowarfare to cyberattacks, humanity has much to overcome. Martin Rees and Frederick Lamb discuss the obstacles we face as we look forward to humanity’s future on Earth.

Lost, not forgotten.

Arecibo Observatory’s collapse on Dec. 1, 2020 was a devastating blow for science, but its decades of observations will inform research for years to come.