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That So-Called Alien Megastructure Could Just Be A Distorted Star
The Kepler Space Telescope recently picked up unprecedented flickering behaviour from a distant star, leading to speculation that — among other things — it might be an alien megastructure. Now, some astronomers are saying it might just be caused by a rapidly spinning and irregularly shaped star.
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New Scale Pinpoints Most Life-Friendly Alien Planets
Researchers at the University of Washington’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory have devised a new habitability index for judging how suitable alien planets might be for life. The point of the exercise is to help scientists prioritise future targets for close-ups from NASA’s yet-to-be-launched James Webb Space Telescope and other instruments.
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Where In Our Galaxy Are All The Aliens?
There may be billions of habitable worlds throughout the Milky Way, but where are the radio-blasting, starship-sailing aliens? Where are our cosmic Snapchat buddies? If they exist, they’re probably thousands of light years away from us, nestled somewhere toward the center of our Galaxy.
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Why It’s So Hard To Find Alien LIfe
A big reason why the Fermi paradox has punch is the matter of time. Max Tegmark gets into this in his excellent new book Our Mathematical Universe (Knopf, 2014), where he runs through what many thinkers on the subject have noted: Our sun is young enough that countless stars and the planets that orbit them…