Now that gravitational wave astronomy is a viable means of investigating the cosmos, we’re capable of studying extreme events like the merger of black holes and even neutron stars. Anything that generates ripples in spacetime large enough to spot is fair game, and...
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Set Your Gyros for Mars: Giving a Second Chance to Conquest of Space
Larry Klaes began developing a following for his deep dives into science fiction cinema long ago on Centauri Dreams, through memorable looks at films like The Thing from Another World, Forbidden Planet and The Day the Earth Stood Still. Although he delves into recent...
SETI and Gravitational Lensing
Radio and optical SETI look for evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations even though we have no evidence that such exist. The search is eminently worthwhile and opens up the ancillary question: How would a transmitting civilization produce a signal strong enough for...
Fusion Pellets and the ‘Bussard Buzz Bomb’
Fusion runways remind me of the propulsion methods using pellets that have been suggested over the years in the literature. Before the runway concept emerged, the idea of firing pellets at a departing spacecraft was developed by Clifford Singer. Aware of the...
Interstellar Propulsion in ‘3 Body Problem’
You never know when a new interstellar propulsion concept is going to pop up. Some of us have been kicking around fusion runway ideas, motivated by Netflix’s streaming presentation of the Liu Cixin novel The Three Body Problem. There Earth is faced with invasion from...
Free-Floating Planets as Interstellar Targets
Just a few weeks ago I wrote about stellar interactions, taking note of a concept advanced by scientists including Ben Zuckerman and Greg Matloff that such stars would make for easier interstellar travel. After all, if a star in its rotation around the Milky Way...
Building the Heavy Elements
A kilonova at the wrong place and time would spell trouble for any lifeforms emerging on a planetary surface. Just how we found out about kilonovae and the conditions that create them, not to mention their hypothesized effects, is the subject of Don Wilkins’ latest, a...
To the Stars with Human Crews?
How long before we can send humans to another star system? Ask people active in the interstellar community and you’ll get answers ranging from ‘at least a century’ to ‘never.’ I’m inclined toward a view nudging into the ‘never’ camp but not quite getting there. In...
Alone in the Cosmos?
We live in a world that is increasingly at ease with the concept of intelligent extraterrestrial life. The evidence for this is all around us, but I’ll cite what Louis Friedman says in his new book Alone But Not Lonely: Exploring for Extraterrestrial Life (University...
Open Cluster SETI
Globular clusters, those vast ‘cities of stars’ that orbit our galaxy, get a certain amount of traction in SETI circles because of their age, dating back as they do to the earliest days of the Milky Way. But as Henry Cordova explains below, they’re a less promising...