Tags: seti

The Last Pictures: Contemporary pessimism and hope for the future by Paul Glister

From the cave paintings at Lascaux to the Pioneer plaques and Voyager golden records to Trevor Paglen’s “The Last Pictures” project, Paul Glister examines the passage and preservation of art and information through time. Fascinating.

Or perhaps, as Paglen envisions, those who find a Pioneer Plaque, a Voyager Record, or one of our electromagnetic transmissions will be interested enough to search us out, coming upon a future Earth where all that is left of humanity are our terrestrial ruins and that artificial ring of geosynchronous satellites, with one of them having a particular golden artifact bolted to its pitted hull. In that scenario, about all that would be left for the visiting ETI to do in terms of learning about us would be grand-scale dumpster diving.

SETILive

This is not only the single most important human endeavour that you can participate in, it is also ridiculously gorgeous.

Science!

The Fermi Paradox, Self-Replicating Probes, and the Interstellar Transportation Bandwidth

Re-examining Von Neumann probes, reconciling their apparent scarcity with the Fermi paradox.

Terry Bisson’s “They’re Made Out of Meat” on Huffduffer

A classic (very) short science fiction story that posits an interesting solution to the Fermi paradox.

Setistars

Would you like SETI to resume sweeping the skies in search of extraterrestrial life? Now you can put your money behind re-kickstarting that noble mission.

IAA SETI Permanent Study Group: Post-Detection Protocols

A nine-point document that constitutes a "Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence."

An Archaeological Approach to SETI

The search for Dyson spheres.

John Resig - Most Bizarre IE Quirk

The title of "most bizarre IE quirk" is hotly contested, given just how many of them there are. But John has found a real humdinger here.