Related papers: Cosmic Contact Censorship
Using the recent limits established by ATLAS to the contact four-fermion interaction, bounds on the size of the extra dimensions of space-time have been found, by assuming that the contact interactions come through the inclusion of torsion…
An expanding civilization could rapidly spread through the galaxy, so the absence of extraterrestrial settlement in the solar system implies that such expansionist civilizations do not exist. This argument, often referred to as the Fermi…
Several long-standing anomalies from short-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments -- most recently corroborated by new data from MiniBooNE -- have led to the hypothesis that extra, 'sterile', neutrino species might exist. Models of this…
Most stars in the Universe are red dwarfs. They outnumber stars like our Sun by a factor of 5 and outlive them by another factor of 20 (population-weighted mean). When combined with recent observations uncovering an abundance of temperate,…
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…
Many hypotheses have been raised to explain the famous Fermi paradox. One of them is that self-replicating probes could have explored the whole Galaxy, including our Solar System, and that they are still to be detected. In this scenario, it…
In this paper we consider the Fermi's paradox (FP) and propose a possible resolution in the context of super-advanced alien civilizations. In this sense it can be regarded as to be the weak Fermi paradox (WFP). By assuming that…
We assess how physically realistic the ''simulation hypothesis'' for this Universe is, based on physical constraints arising from the link between information and energy, and on known astrophysical constraints. We investigate three cases:…
Matter collapsing to a singularity in a gravitational field is still an intriguing question. Similar situation arises when discussing the very early universe or a universe recollapsing to a singularity. It is suggested that inclusion of…
After a short history of the $\Lambda$-term it is explained why the (effective) cosmological constant is expected to obtain contributions from short-distance physics, corresponding to an energy at least as large as the Fermi scale. The…
The comment by Stadnik [arXiv:2111.14351v1] claims that "back-action", i.e. interaction of exotic low-mass fields (ELF) with ordinary matter, "prevents the multi-messenger astronomy on human timescales." We strongly disagree with this…
We address the possibility that intelligent civilisations that destroy themselves could present signatures observable by humanity. Placing limits on the number of self-destroyed civilisations in the Milky Way has strong implications for the…
Cosmology seems extremely remote from everyday human practice and experience. It is usually taken for granted that cosmological data cannot rationally influence our beliefs about the fate of humanity -- and possible other intelligent…
Dark matter remains a mystery in fundamental physics. The only evidence for dark matter's existence is from gravitational interactions. We constructed a precision torsion balance experiment to search for non-gravitational, long-range…
Within the scheme of conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC), information can be transmitted from aeon to aeon. Accordingly, the "Fermi paradox" and the SETI programme - of communication by remote civilizations - may be examined from a novel…
A surprising connection between the weak gravity conjecture and cosmic censorship has recently been proposed. In particular, it was argued that a promising class of counterexamples to cosmic censorship in four-dimensional…
Surprisingly, the question "Is there Life in the Universe outside Earth?" has been raised, in rational terms, almost only in the western literature throughout the ages. In a first part I justify this statement. Then I try to develop an…
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…
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…
Penrose's weak cosmic censorship conjecture asserts that spacetime singularities produced by gravitational collapse are generically hidden behind event horizons, thus preventing them from causally influencing distant observers and…