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...
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Galactic ‘Nature Preserves’ over Deep Time
Speculating about the diffusion of intelligent species through the galaxy, as we've been doing these past few posts, is always jarring. I go back to the concept of ‘deep time,’ which is forced on us when we confront years in their billions. I can’t speak for anyone...
Life Elsewhere? Relaxing the Copernican Principle
Most people I know are enthusiastic about the idea that other intelligent races exist in the galaxy. Contact is assumed to be an inevitable and probably profoundly good thing, with the exchange of knowledge possibly leading to serious advances in our own culture. This...
Holiday Thoughts on Deep Time
An old pal from high school mentioned in an email the other day that he had an interest in Adam Frank’s work, which we’ve looked at in these pages a number of times. Although my most recent post on Frank involves a 2022 paper on technosignatures written with Penn...
Talking to Starglider
When we’ve discussed interstellar ‘interlopers’ like ‘Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, the science fiction-minded among us have now and then noted Arthur Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama (Gollancz, 1973). Although we’ve yet to figure out definitively what ‘Oumuamua is (2/I...
To Build an Interstellar Radio Bridge
I sometimes imagine Claudio Maccone having a particularly vivid dream, a bright star surrounded by a ring of fire that all but grazes its surface. And from this ring an image begins to form behind him, kilometers wide, dwarfing him and carrying in its pixels the view...
Reflections on Breakthrough Starshot
If we’re going to get to the stars, the path along the way has to go through an effort like Breakthrough Starshot. This is not to say that Breakthrough will achieve an interstellar mission, though its aspirational goal of reaching a nearby star like Proxima Centauri...
The “Habitability” of Worlds (Part I)
Dave Moore is a Centauri Dreams regular who has long pursued an interest in the observation and exploration of deep space. He was born and raised in New Zealand, spent time in Australia, and now runs a small business in Klamath Falls, Oregon. He counts Arthur C....
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Spherical Lens: Reflections on a Gravity Lens Telescope (Part I)
A growing interest in JPL's Solar Gravitational Lens mission here takes Wes Kelly on an odyssey into the past. A long-time Centauri Dreams contributor, Wes looks at the discovery of gravitational lensing, which takes us back not only to Einstein but to a putative...
Building Smallsat Capabilities for the Outer System
‘LightCraft’ is the term used by Slava Turyshev’s team at JPL and elsewhere to identify the current design of the ambitious mission we looked at briefly in the previous post. This is a Technology Demonstrator Mission (TDM), which can be considered a precursor to what...