Related papers: Novel Technosignatures
Extraterrestrial technology may exist in the Solar System without our knowledge. This is because the vastness of space, combined with our limited searches to date, implies that any remote unpiloted exploratory probes of extraterrestrial…
The detection of Earth-like exoplanets in the habitable zone of their stars, and their spectroscopic characterization in a search for biosignatures, requires starlight suppression that exceeds the current best ground-based performance by…
In 2012, physicists and astronomers celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the detection of cosmic rays by Viktor Hess. One year later, in 2013, there was first evidence for extraterrestrial high-energy neutrinos, i.e. for signal which may…
Most violent and energetic processes in our universe, including mergers of compact objects, explosions of massive stars and extreme accretion events, produce copious amounts of X-rays. X-ray follow-up is an efficient tool for identifying…
For more than a century, artificial lighting has served mainly for illumination. Only recently, we start to transform our lighting infrastructure to provide new services such as indoor localization and network connectivity. These innovative…
The Earth viewed from outside the Solar system would be identified merely like a pale blue dot, as coined by Carl Sagan. In order to detect possible signatures of the presence of life on a second earth among several terrestrial planets…
The emission of 21-cm radiation from a neutral intergalactic medium (IGM) at high redshift is discussed in connection with the thermal and ionization history of the universe. The physical mechanisms that make such radiation detectable…
We consider global catastrophic risks due to cosmic explosions (supernovae, magnetars and gamma-ray bursts) and possible mitigation strategies by humans and other hypothetical intelligent beings. While by their very nature these events are…
Searching for extrasolar biosignatures is important to understand life on Earth and its origin. Astronomical observations of exoplanets may find such signatures, but it is difficult and may be impossible to claim unambiguous detection of…
The Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) aims to find technological signals of extra-solar origin. Radio frequency SETI is characterized by large unlabeled datasets and complex interference environment. The infinite…
The discovery of ubiquitous habitable extrasolar planets, combined with revolutionary advances in instrumentation and observational capabilities, has ushered in a renaissance in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). Large…
Over the past two decades, enormous advances in the detection of exoplanets have taken place. Currently, we have discovered hundreds of earth-sized planets, several of them within the habitable zone of their star. In the coming years, the…
The search for life beyond the Earth is the overarching goal of the NASA Astrobiology Program, and it underpins the science of missions that explore the environments of Solar System planets and exoplanets. However, the detection of…
The searches for other life and for intelligence are fundamental problems that science faces today. Most searches so far have been focused on radio, but optical laser communication is an alternative, well suited for a ground-based…
The Optical Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (OSETI) attempts to detect collimated, narrowband pulses of electromagnetic radiation. These pulses may either consist of signals intentionally directed at the Earth, or signals between…
An updated, binary-coded message has been developed for transmission to extraterrestrial intelligences in the Milky Way galaxy. The proposed message includes basic mathematical and physical concepts to establish a universal means of…
MIT wanted to commission a large scale artwork that would serve to 'illuminate a new campus gateway, inaugurate a space of exchange between MIT and Cambridge, and inspire our students, faculty, visitors, and the surrounding community to…
A major aspect of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) involves searching for electromagnetic transmissions from extraterrestrial sources, often using our own transmissions as a guide. Previous studies have suggested that…
A brief review is made of some of the experimental signatures that may be associated to a certain class of extensions of the standard model. The material of these lectures is divided into two sections. After briefly sketching the present…
The presence of dark energy in our universe is causing space to expand at an accelerating rate. As a result, over the next approximately 100 billion years, all stars residing beyond the Local Group will fall beyond the cosmic horizon and…