Related papers: Geo-engineering Gone Awry: A New Partial Solution …
Whether we are alone in the universe is one of the greatest mysteries facing humankind. Given the >100 billion stars in our galaxy, many have argued that it is statistically unlikely that life, including intelligent life, has not emerged…
An interesting consequence of the modern cosmological paradigm is the spatial infinity of the universe. When coupled with naturalistic understanding of the origin of life and intelligence, which follows the basic tenets of astrobiology, and…
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…
The era of high precision Cosmology has shown our ignorance about the composition of the Universe. In this context, there has been a renewed interest on Alternative Theories of Gravity. Through the experience of a graviton measured by the…
The Great Filter hypothesis is an extension of the Fermi Paradox: "If life is so common in the universe, why don't we see it?" The Great Filter theory posits there are multiple obstacles or filters life must pass through which ultimately…
Astronomers carry out observations to explore the diverse processes and objects which populate our Universe. High-energy physicists carry out experiments to approach the Fundamental Theory underlying space, time and matter. Dark Energy is a…
The recent discovery of super-Earths (masses less or equal to 10 earth-masses) has initiated a discussion about conditions for habitable worlds. Among these is the mode of convection, which influences a planet's thermal evolution and…
Earth's future detectability depends upon the trajectory of our civilization over the coming centuries. Human civilization is also the only known example of an energy-intensive civilization, so our history and future trajectories provide…
This study examines the hypothesis that the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), culminating in the emergence of Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), could act as a "Great Filter" that is responsible for the scarcity of…
When recent observational evidence and the GR+FRW+CDM model are combined we obtain the result that the Universe is accelerating, where the acceleration is due to some not-yet-understood "dark sector". There has been a considerable number of…
Although the scientific principles of anthropogenic climate change are well-established, existing calculations of the warming effect of carbon dioxide rely on spectral absorption databases, which obscures the physical foundations of the…
Explanations of the late-time cosmic acceleration within the framework of general relativity are plagued by difficulties. General relativistic models are mostly based on a dark energy field with fine-tuned, unnatural properties. There is a…
We investigate the effects of correlated global regulation mechanisms, especially Galactic gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), on the temporal distribution of hypothetical inhabited planets, using simple Monte Carlo numerical experiments. Starting…
Provided significant future progress in artificial intelligence and computing, it may ultimately be possible to create multiple Artificial General Intelligences (AGIs), and possibly entire societies living within simulated environments. In…
In this paper we review a part of the approaches that have been considered to explain the extraordinary discovery of the late time acceleration of the Universe. We discuss the arguments that have led physicists and astronomers to accept…
The absence of planets interior to Mercury continues to puzzle terrestrial planet formation models, particularly when contrasted with the relatively high derived occurrence rates of short-period planets around Sun-like stars. Recent work…
We survey the landscape of $f(R)$ theories of gravity in their various formulations, which have been used to model the cosmic acceleration as alternatives to dark energy and dark matter. Besides, we take into account the problem of…
Modern astrophysical and cosmological models are plagued with two severe theoretical difficulties, namely, the dark energy and the dark matter problems. Relative to the former, high-precision observational data have confirmed with startling…
It has been widely acknowledged that self-replicating space-probes (SRPs) could explore the galaxy very quickly relative to the age of the galaxy. An obvious implication is that SRPs produced by extraterrestrial civilizations should have…
From an anthropological point of view, the whole concept of a "path of progress" in astronomical discovery is anathema, since it implicitly downgrades other cultural perspectives, such as the many "indigenous cosmologies" that still exist…