Related papers: Rationale for METI
A simple evolutionary model for biological ageing is modified such that it requires a minimum population for survival, like in human society. This social effect leads to a transition between extinction and survival of the species.
The goal of the article is to explore what is the most probable type of simulation in which humanity lives (if any) and how this affects simulation termination risks. We firstly explore the question of what kind of simulation in which…
Population expansions trigger many biomedical and ecological transitions, from tumor growth to invasions of non-native species. Although population spreading often selects for more invasive phenotypes, we show that this outcome is far from…
AI that can accelerate research could drive a century of technological progress over just a few years. During such a period, new technological or political developments will raise consequential and hard-to-reverse decisions, in rapid…
The influence of recent detections of a finite vacuum energy ("cosmological constant") on our formulation of anthropic conjectures, particularly the so-called Final Anthropic Principle is investigated. It is shown that non-zero vacuum…
We present a model where some proportion of extraterrestrial civilizations expand uniformly over time to reach a cosmological scale. We then ask what humanity could infer if a sky survey were to find zero, one, or more such civilizations.…
The design of protocols to suppress the propagation of viral infections is an enduring enterprise, especially hindered by limited knowledge of the mechanisms through which extinction of infection propagation comes about. We here report on a…
Despite the extraordinary successes the two great bastions of $20^{th}$ century science (Quantum Theory and General Relativity) are troubled with serious conceptual and mathematical difficulties. As a result, further growth of fundamental…
The limitations of current technology do not allow one to foresee the expansion of the humankind beyond our planet for at least a few decades. Furthermore, the laws of physics, as for as they are known, preclude any form of traveling beyond…
If a sufficiently advanced civilization can either modulate the emission from an X-ray binary, or make use of the natural high luminosity to power an artificial transmitter, these can serve as good beacons for interstellar communication…
In AI, the existential risk denotes the hypothetical threat posed by an artificial system that would possess both the capability and the objective, either directly or indirectly, to eradicate humanity. This issue is gaining prominence in…
At any moment in time, evolution is faced with a formidable challenge: refining the already highly optimised design of biological species, a feat accomplished through all preceding generations. In such a scenario, the impact of random…
SETI is not a usual point of departure for environmental humanities. However, this paper argues that theories originating in this field have direct implications for how we think about viable inhabitation of the Earth. To demonstrate SETI's…
"Fake news" is a recent phenomenon, but misinformation and propaganda are not. Our new communication technologies make it easy for us to be exposed to high volumes of true, false, irrelevant, and unprovable information. Future AI is…
The Milky Way Galaxy contains an unknown number, $N$, of civilizations that emit electromagnetic radiation (of unknown wavelengths) over a finite lifetime, $L$. Here we are assuming that the radiation is not produced indefinitely, but…
This article derives prognostic expressions for the evolution of globally aggregated economic wealth, productivity, inflation, technological change, innovation and growth. The approach is to treat civilization as an open, non-equilibrium…
The global climate crisis poses new risks to humanity, and with them, new challenges to the practices of professional astronomy. Avoiding the more catastrophic consequences of global warming by more than 1.5 degrees requires an immediate…
Cosmos has always sparked human curiosity to unveil and speculate its fascinating secrets. This curiosity has ultimately opened a window to other worlds. After years of observation, computation, and data analysis, scientists have revealed…
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has thus far failed to provide a convincing detection of intelligent life. In the wake of this null signal, many "contact pessimistic" hypotheses have been formulated, the most famous of…
At a time when humanity has achieved global dominance at a scale that was previously thought impossible, it might also face an existential threat due to the consequences of that overwhelming influence on our common home, the Earth System…