Related papers: SETI in vivo: testing the we-are-them hypothesis
Scientists at the Berkeley SETI Research Center are Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) by a new signal detection method that converts radio signals into spectrograms through Fourier transforms and classifies signals…
The search for technosignatures from hypothetical galactic civilizations is going through a new phase of intense activity. For the first time, a significant fraction of the vast search space is expected to be sampled in the foreseeable…
The hypothesis that Earth was intentionally seeded with life by a preceding extraterrestrial civilization is believed to be currently untestable. However, analysis of the situation where humans themselves embark on seeding other planetary…
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…
There have been periodic efforts in recent decades to search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), especially by trying to find an extraterrestrial (ET) radio signal or other technosignature in space. Yet, no such technosignatures have…
We begin with the premise that the law of entropy could prove to be fundamental for the evolution of intelligent life and the advent of technological civilization. Building on recent theoretical results, we combine a modern approach to…
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…
With unprecedented advances in genetic engineering we are starting to see progressively more original examples of synthetic life. As such organisms become more common it is desirable to be able to distinguish between natural and artificial…
Molecular assembly offers a promising path to detect life beyond Earth, while minimizing assumptions based on terrestrial life. As mass spectrometers will be central to upcoming Solar System missions, predicting molecular assembly from…
Biologically-inspired AI agent frameworks claim reliability benefits through structural guarantees adapted from gene regulatory networks, immune systems, and metabolic control. These claims are rarely tested empirically against simpler…
The origin of life is one of the greatest mysteries. The mechanism for the synthesis of DNA is synonymous with the chemical origin of life, and theories have been developed along many lines of reasoning, but resolving all requirements…
Recent advances in weakly supervised text classification mostly focus on designing sophisticated methods to turn high-level human heuristics into quality pseudo-labels. In this paper, we revisit the seed matching-based method, which is…
Life emerged on the Earth within the first quintile of its habitable window, but a technological civilization did not blossom until its last. Efforts to infer the rate of abiogenesis, based on its early emergence, are frustrated by the…
In the coming years and decades, advanced space- and ground-based observatories will allow an unprecedented opportunity to probe the atmospheres and surfaces of potentially habitable exoplanets for signatures of life. Life on Earth, through…
Ocean worlds are considered as targets for life detection missions because they meet several key requirements for habitability. However, identifying potential life on other worlds requires observing clear and unambiguous biosignature…
In ecological systems, be it a petri dish or a galaxy, populations evolve from some initial value (say zero) up to a steady state equilibrium, when the mean number of births and deaths per unit time are equal. This equilibrium point is a…
It is unclear how frequently life and intelligence arise on planets. I consider a Bayesian prior for the probability P(ETI) that intelligence evolves at a suitable site, with weight distributed evenly over ln(1 - ln P(ETI)). This log log…
Evolutionary theorizing resembles building an aircraft while also piloting it; new results change the scaffold for older ideas, requiring revised strategy to remain airborne. A calculated kinetic pathway exists that, under explicit…
We introduce several axioms which may or may not hold for any given subgraph of the directed graph of all organisms (past, present and future) where edges represent biological parenthood, with the simplifying background assumption that life…
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (ETI) is, historically, a search for aliens like us, inspired by human centric ideas of intelligence and technology. However, humans are not the only instance of an intelligent, communicating…