Building a Better Alien-Calling Code

Alien-seeking researchers have designed a new, simple code for sending messages into space. To a reasonably clever alien with math skills and a bit of astronomical training, the messages should be easy to decipher.

As of now, Earthlings spend much more time searching for alien radio messages than broadcasting news of ourselves. We know how to do it, but relatively little attention has been paid to “ensuring that a transmitted message will be understandable to an alien listener,” wrote California Institute of Technology geoscientist Michael Busch and Rachel Reddick, a Stanford University physicist, in a study filed online Friday on arXiv.

According to Busch and Reddick, neither the Arecibo message, beamed at star cluster M13 in 1974, nor the Cosmic Calls sent in 1999 and 2003 were tested for decipherability. So the pair devised their own alien-friendly messaging system: Busch invented the code, and Reddick role-played the part of an alien trying to decode it.

Like the earlier codes, Busch’s used radio to send a string of ones and zeroes. But whereas those messages were meant to be translated into pictures, Busch’s code is supposed to be turned into mathematical equations.

Reddick received the code, minus a chunk at its beginning and fragments throughout its body, as if she’d tuned in late to a signal slightly distorted by its passage through space. Knowing nothing about the code, and using nothing but a pencil, paper and a computer’s search-and-replace function, she decoded its start: descriptions of gravity and atomic mass ratios, which are “dimensionless numbers that should be universally recognized.” Once Reddick worked those out, the rest of the message — descriptions of atoms, chemical formulas for the elements required for life on Earth, and details of our solar system — came quickly.

The code does presume that alien listeners have “at least an equivalent knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, and physics,” wrote Busch and Reddick. But even five undergraduate students needed only an hour to figure out a few of Busch’s mathematical and grammatical basics, so it can’t be that hard.

For now, it seems unlikely that the code will actually be sent into space. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence runs on a shoestring budget, and doesn’t directly receive national funding. But if it’s this cheap and easy to talk to aliens, perhaps humanity should try more often.

via Building a Better Alien-Calling Code | Wired Science | Wired.com.

Scientist expects fish-sized Aliens living under Ice on Jupiter Moon

In the oceans of a moon hundreds of millions of miles from the sun, something fishy may be alive—right now.

Below its icy crust Jupiter’s moon Europa is believed to host a global ocean up to a hundred miles (160 kilometers) deep, with no land to speak of at the surface. (See “Jupiter Moon Has Violent, Hidden Oceans, Study Suggests.“)

And the extraterrestrial ocean is currently being fed more than a hundred times more oxygen than previous models had suggested, according to provocative new research.

That amount of oxygen would be enough to support more than just microscopic life-forms: At least three million tons of fishlike creatures could theoretically live and breathe on Europa, said study author Richard Greenberg of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

“There’s nothing saying there is life there now,” said Greenberg, who presented his work last month at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences. “But we do know there are the physical conditions to support it.”

In fact, based on what we know about the Jovian moon, parts of Europa’s seafloor should greatly resemble the environments around Earth’s deep-ocean hydrothermal vents, said deep-sea molecular ecologist Timothy Shank.

“I’d be shocked if no life existed on Europa,” said Shank, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who was not involved in the new study.

via Could Jupiter Moon Harbor Fish-Size Life?.

I think I see them…

Obama President to acknowledge aliens today

When “The Top Secret UFO Project,” filmmaker R. J. Thomas’ parody of UFO documentaries, premiered on DVD in 2006, Mr. Thomas knew he would get reactions in all sizes and shapes.

Daily Grail.com, a UFO-themed website, said that the mockrumentary film was bound to cause some confusion. Well, they turned out to be right.

“I’ve received phone calls. I’ve received e-mails. Bloggers are arguing about whether it’s a fake or not,” Mr. Thomas said. “Some are telling me that UFOs don’t exist, and that the Bush administration had no UFO information to withold from the public. Others are saying that UFOs do exist, urging me to be patient because government UFO secrets will be exposed shortly.”

But the most unusual reaction came from a caller who left a message on Mr. Thomas’ voice mail on October 13th. In a deep and mysterious voice, the caller said, “We are not alone. On November 17th, President Obama will acknowledge about the aliens.”

“He put a big pause in-between the two sentences.” Mr. Thomas said. “I don’t know if it is just the way he talks or he was doing it for dramatic effect.”

The caller left no name, phone number, e-mail address, or even bothered to say whether he was affiliated with any UFO-related organization.

“He spoke in a deep, ominous voice,” Mr. Thomas said. “He would be perfect to do the narration of an eerie SyFy Channel documentary or be the narrator of a haunted house amusement park ride.” …

via Mysterious Caller Alerts Filmmaker to Obama UFO Disclosure.

In case the ominous voice is correct, here is a link to the White House so you can read the disclosure. I suppose they will post it there. Here is a link to White House posts with the word “alien”.

Alien abduction flick The Fourth Kind is dangerous

The Fourth Kind links the widely recognised phenomenon of sleep paralysis with the purely fictional idea of alien abduction. Photograph: Universal Pictures/PR

The Fourth Kind is, in so many ways, a really awful film. Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi and released in the UK over the weekend, it purports to be a dramatic reconstruction of events that took place in the city of Nome, Alaska, involving the disappearance of local residents. If you were to accept this film at face value, you would be left in no doubt whatsoever that these disappearances were the result of “close encounters of the fourth kind” – abduction by aliens.

The film employs several far-from-subtle techniques in an attempt to convince viewers that what they are watching is based entirely upon documented evidence. Both the trailer and the film itself open with an assurance to that effect, direct to camera, from the film's star:

“I am actress Milla Jovovich and I will be portraying Dr Abigail Tyler. This film is a dramatisation of events that occurred October 2000. Every scene in this movie is supported by archive footage. Some of what you are about to see is extremely disturbing.”

At least the latter statement is accurate, although not for the reasons intended by the filmmakers.

Both trailer and film frequently cut between allegedly real footage of hypnotic regression sessions carried out by psychologist Dr Tyler on her patients and dramatic reconstructions of these same sessions, sometimes employing a split-screen technique to show both simultaneously to “prove” that the reconstructions are 100% accurate. This approach seems to have backfired badly on the filmmakers as most reviews of the film are highly critical of this unconvincing “archive footage”.

Kyle Hopkins wrote an excellent piece for the Anchorage Daily News debunking the movie. He conceded that there is a long history of disappearances and suspicious deaths in Nome. They have been investigated by the FBI who “mostly blamed alcohol and the cruel Alaska winter”.

via Alien abduction flick The Fourth Kind is dangerous twaddle | Chris French | Science | guardian.co.uk.

Vatican looks for signs of alien life

Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church.

“The questions of life’s origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration,” said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.

Funes, a Jesuit priest, presented the results Tuesday of a five-day conference that gathered astronomers, physicists, biologists and other experts to discuss the budding field of astrobiology — the study of the origin of life and its existence elsewhere in the cosmos.

Funes said the possibility of alien life raises “many philosophical and theological implications” but added that the gathering was mainly focused on the scientific perspective and how different disciplines can be used to explore the issue.

Chris Impey, an astronomy professor at the University of Arizona, said it was appropriate that the Vatican would host such a meeting.

“Both science and religion posit life as a special outcome of a vast and mostly inhospitable universe,” he told a news conference Tuesday. “There is a rich middle ground for dialogue between the practitioners of astrobiology and those who seek to understand the meaning of our existence in a biological universe.”

Thirty scientists, including non-Catholics, from the U.S., France, Britain, Switzerland, Italy and Chile attended the conference, called to explore among other issues “whether sentient life forms exist on other worlds.”

Funes set the stage for the conference a year ago when he discussed the possibility of alien life in an interview given prominence in the Vatican’s daily newspaper.

The Church of Rome’s views have shifted radically through the centuries since Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600 for speculating, among other ideas, that other worlds could be inhabited.

Scientists have discovered hundreds of planets outside our solar system — including 32 new ones announced recently by the European Space Agency. Impey said the discovery of alien life may be only a few years away.

“If biology is not unique to the Earth, or life elsewhere differs bio-chemically from our version, or we ever make contact with an intelligent species in the vastness of space, the implications for our self-image will be profound,” he said.

This is not the first time the Vatican has explored the issue of extraterrestrials: In 2005, its observatory brought together top researchers in the field for similar discussions

via Vatican looks to heavens for signs of alien life – Yahoo! News.

Is the discovery of alien life being suppressed because religious leaders are afraid people would freak out?

Darwin will help find alien life

… a Nasa scientist said that Darwinian evolution will be the driving force of life anywhere in the universe, and we should use its predictions to decide where to look.

Dr John Baross, a researcher at the Nasa Astrobiology Institute, said: “I really feel that Darwinian evolution is a defining feature of all life.

“And so the limits of Darwinian evolution will define the range of planets that can support life – at least Earth-like life.”

Speaking at a public lecture at the Nasa Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, Dr Baross said that the Kepler Space Telescope’s mission, looking for Earth-like planets around other stars, made this an exciting time for astrobiology – the search for alien life.

He said: “I predict in the next five to ten years, we will make discoveries that will lead to theories and ideas at least as profound as Darwin’s.”

Dr Baross said that looking for alien life has always involved using the Earth as a model. While our understanding of how life began is incomplete, it seems clear that there are certain requirements.

All life on Earth needs water, carbon-based organic molecules, and an energy source, either solar or chemical. But alien life may not be entirely Earth-like. Dr Baross said: “I’d like to point out there are many different ways for non-Earth-like life to not use light or chemical energy but use some other form like radiation energy, wave energy, or ultraviolet energy.”

Similarly, the need for water may not be universal. Dr Baross said: “[Life may exist] in an organic solvent rather than liquid water on Titan, or… at temperatures of minus 100 degrees Celsius — there are a lot of ways to think of this because those conditions exist on other planetary bodies.”

So far, astronomers have found 403 “exoplanets” – planets outside our own solar system. While most of them are Jupiter-like gas giants hundreds or thousands of times bigger than the Earth, a few smaller ones have been found, and Kepler is expected to start finding many more over the next few years.

via Darwinian evolutionary theory will help find alien life, says Nasa scientist – Telegraph.

Lies and Deception: UFO’s and the Secret Agenda

Apparently there was a UFO crash in the 1940s that put Roswell to shame. At last you can hear about it! Put out by Reality Films and Edge Media in the UK, this documentary has it all: Hastily-assembled CGI illustrations of aliens, talking heads whose British accents will convince you of anything, and fun factoids from the secret history of UFOlogy. Items covered that you won’t want to miss include the “war” between humans and aliens, as well as the idea that the aliens are slowly evolving to survive in Earth’s atmosphere. Exciting! – io9

Join Timothy Good and Nick Pope on a journey into the world of Aliens and UFO’s, as they explore the latest evidence for extraterrestrial contact.

As Timothy Good states, “Contact has been established” and in this film we discover the truth that “they” don’t want you to know. Black technology developed from crashed alien craft. On-going hybridization of the human race. How President Kennedy insisted on seeing the Roswell alien bodies. The release of classified top secret UK documents. Who is keeping the secret files? When will full disclosure come? The evidence is REAL and mounting! A film in partnership with Edge Media TV in the UK and Reality Films.

via YouTube – Lies and Deception: UFO’s and the Secret Agenda.

Claims are interesting but I’m still waiting for real evidence.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind Scene

I always liked this part. I wanted the music to get a lot faster so it sounded like there was much more data being transferred, however. Great score.

NASA and LCROSS according to the secret ancient lunar dome people…

I heard Richard Hoagland several times on Art Bell’s Dreamland a few years ago. Very interesting speaker. Enjoy listening to him. He never seems to get his theories about Mars and the Moon definitely proved, however. Huge cover up, or bad luck, I guess.

… LCROSS’ secret lunar mission turns out to be, in fact, designed — from the beginning — as nothing less than “an official, clandestine, NASA multi-sensor search for … and scientific characterization of … artificial ruins on the Moon”

This objective, of course, being deliberately complimentary to the primary “hidden mission” (again …) of its companion lunar spacecraft–

LRO.

(What did you think the “reconnaissance” part of “LRO” really stands for …?)

Intriguingly, snippits of this primary “LCROSS/LRO hidden agenda” were deliberately leaked — and from inside the LCROSS Project itself … — in its first close-up “lunar swing-by” observations of the Moon last summer, on the morning of June 23, 2009.

At that time (again, as we reported in Part I), some astonishing infrared images were released (leaked …?) by the LCROSS Team itself (below) — which revealed for the first time hard, scientific evidence for the existence of “a semi-transparent, heat-radiating substance …” stretching over (and along) much of the Farside lunar limb …. In other words, some kind of “ancient lunar dome … or domes” — precisely as we have been describing ….

What’s producing that?!

“That” is the combined effect of “countless numbers of semi-transparent, heat-radiating, ancient lunar structures …” all blending together … along a substantial section of the horizon of the Farside of the Moon ….

They have “given themselves away” by their intrinsic thermal heating from the Sun … and then, re-radiation of that heat back into space … which the sensitive LCROSS’ IR cameras immediately picked up — and then displayed as that “room temperature” yellow-arc stretching above the real, higher-temperature (red) lunar surface.

The potential extent of these artificial lunar structures — stretching along a major segment of the total visible horizon! — may surprise some new to our lunar investigations; it shouldn’t.

Mike and I first predicted this possible major extant of the “Farside lunar domes,” based on analysis of a visible light Apollo 15 image (AS15-88-12013) — which showed MAJOR “back-scattering,” stretching all along the lunar limb, in visible light … recorded as Apollo 15 was climbing away from the Moon (below); we published our preliminary analysis of this crucial Hasselblad image in the original editions of Dark Mission — as “Color Figure 16.”

via . http://www.enterprisemission.com/SmokingGun2.htm

Police officer sees aliens at crop circle

The telegraph picked up that story about a cop seeing aliens at a crop circle that I blogged about a while back in July of this year.

The sergeant, who has not been named, was off-duty when he saw the figures standing in a field near Silbury Hill, and stopped his car to investigate. However, as he approached the ‘men’ – all over 6ft tall with blond hair – he heard “the sound of static electricity” and the trio ran away ”faster than any man he had ever seen”. The officer returned to his home in Marlborough, Wiltshire, and contacted paranormal experts and told them he had spotted a UFO. Wiltshire Police has refused to comment on the incident, saying it is a ”personal matter” for the officer involved. Crop circle researcher Andrew Russell, who is investigating the bizarre sighting on behalf of the officer, described the moment his sighting was made. He said: ”At first he thought they were forensic officers as they were dressed in white coveralls. He stopped his car and approached the field. ”The figures were all over 6ft and had blond hair. They seemed to be inspecting the crop. When he got to the edge of the field he heard what he believed to be a sound not dissimilar to static electricity.

”This crackling noise seemed to be running through the field and the crop was moving gently, close to where the noise was.

”He shouted to the figures who, at first, ignored him, not glancing at him. When he tried to enter the field they looked up and began running.

”He said; ‘They ran faster than any man I have ever seen. I’m no slouch but they were moving so fast. I looked away for a second and when I looked back they were gone.

via UFO alert: police officer sees aliens at crop circle – Telegraph.