Related papers: Cosmic Irony: SETI Optimism from Catastrophes?
Speculative thinking about the capabilities and implications of artificial intelligence (AI) influences computer science research, drives AI industry practices, feeds academic studies of existential hazards, and stirs a global political…
Where is everybody? This phrase distills the foreboding of what has come to be known as the Fermi Paradox - the disquieting idea that, if extraterrestrial life is probable in the Universe, then why have we not encountered it? This conundrum…
This paper highlights a methodological approach designed to enhance the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) by hypothesizing that a transmission technosignature would likely have two features: 1) be wideband in the microwave or…
Ecosystems often undergo abrupt regime shifts in response to gradual external changes. These shifts are theoretically understood as a regime switch between alternative stable states of the ecosystem dynamical response to smooth changes in…
Matrix theory is a proposed non-perturbative definition of superstring theory in which space is emergent. We begin a study of cosmology in the context of matrix theory. Specifically, we show that matrix theory can lead to an emergent…
The advent of artificial intelligence has changed many disciplines such as engineering, social science and economics. Artificial intelligence is a computational technique which is inspired by natural intelligence such as the swarming of…
The steady advances in computer performance and in programming raise the concern that the ability of computers would overtake that of the human brain, an occurrence termed "the Singularity". While comparing the size of the human brain and…
The paper is devoted to a new direction in SETI. After a general discussion of the field, the authors put forth the hypothesis that the black holes may serve as a physical substratum for intelligent beings. This hypothesis is based on four…
Artificial Intelligence (AI) provides many opportunities to improve private and public life. Discovering patterns and structures in large troves of data in an automated manner is a core component of data science, and currently drives…
The ultimate goal of astrobiology is to determine the distribution and diversity of life in the universe. But as the word "biosignature" suggests, what will be detected is not life itself, but an observation implicating a particular process…
Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing research by enabling the efficient analysis of large datasets and the discovery of hidden patterns. In astrophysics, AI has become essential, transforming the classification of celestial…
A flood of reliable seismic data will soon arrive. The migration to larger telescopes on the ground may free up 4-m class instruments for multi-site campaigns, and several forthcoming satellite missions promise to yield nearly uninterrupted…
The topological theory of phase transitions was proposed on the basis of different arguments, the most important of which are: a direct evidence of the relation between topology and phase transitions for some exactly solvable models; an…
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming astronomical research, yet the scientific community has largely treated this transformation as an engineering challenge rather than an epistemological one. This perspective article argues that…
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been increasingly applied in scientific activities for decades; however, it is still far from an insightful and trustworthy collaborator in the scientific process. Most existing AI methods are either too…
Anomalies drive scientific discovery -- they are associated with the cutting edge of the research frontier, and thus typically exploit data in the low signal-to-noise regime. In astronomy, the prevalence of systematics --- both "known…
Gamma-ray bursts are transient events from beyond the solar system. Besides the allure of their mysterious origin, bursts are physically fascinating because they undoubtedly require exotic physics. Optical transients coincident with burst…
One might have hoped that the immediacy and completeness of scientific information provided through the internet would have made the wrongful appropriation of someone else's ideas --now so easy to detect and document-- a sin of the past.…
We hereby consider the problem of detectability of macro-engineering projects over interstellar distances, in the context of Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Freeman J. Dyson and his imaginative precursors, like Konstantin…
The Drake Equation has proven fertile ground for speculation about the abundance, or lack thereof, of communicating extraterrestrial intelligences (CETIs) for decades. It has been augmented by subsequent authors to include random variables…