The discovery of extraterrestrial life can be classified as a low probability, high impact event. Since we don’t have any empirical data to help us assess the consequences of ET contact, governments are largely unequipped to deal with the potential hazards it could pose. In recognition of the impact that such an event would have on society, a...

Looking for inspiration recently I found Edge.org, a website that purports to “seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds” and put them to work on the world’s most difficult problems. A bit presumptuous, but I was intrigued enough to dig a bit deeper. This year in 2013, the contributors (which range from psychologists to futurologists...

A new book by authors Richard Dolan and Bryce Zabel explores what might happen if UFOs turned out to really be from another world. There are some insightful ideas contained in this book, regrettably packaged with credulity-straining aspects of the ‘disclosure’ movement. The consequences of extraterrestrial contact are much more important and vital...

Directed panspermia refers to a theory of exogenesis that involves the sentient, purposeful seeding of life throughout the universe. Because it requires a guiding intelligent hand, it differs from standard theory of panspermia in which life might be accidentally transferred between bodies in the solar system (for example between Mars and Earth) or...

Prometheus is Ridley Scott’s first science fiction film since Blade Runner (1982) and his return to the genre provides an opportunity to revisit some of the core preoccupations of his earlier work. Prometheus shares with Blade Runner more than its dark, foreboding mood and presence of android characters; both films are preoccupied with the nature...

Riding on the train into Valencia the other day, I noticed that fresh graffiti tags had appeared on concrete barriers that are being put in as part of a high-speed rail expansion. The economy in Spain is not doing well at the moment, and there is a lot of youth unemployment, which probably explains the proliferation of graffiti art. A moral panic...

The Voyager 1 probe is currently 119 Astronomical Units (AU) distant from the sun and is traveling at about 3½ AU/yr. 1 AU corresponds to the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun. At 17.8 billion kilometers away, the Voyager 1 craft is the most distant man-made object ever to explore the cosmos. The distances involved are so vast that it...

Discovery of the first extrasolar planet potentially capable of harboring life was announced today by NASA and the Kepler telescope team. The planet, unassumingly dubbed Kepler 22-b, orbits within the habitable zone of its host star, about 15% closer than the Earth orbits our sun. Consequently, astronomers have estimated that its surface temperature...

I was a bit disappointed during the recent Kepler press conference, when they brought in an expert from Industrial Light and Magic who hadn’t prepared any computer graphics to show what life might look like from the surface of Kepler 16b. That’s a shame, since the appeal of fields like astronomy and exobiology for schoolkids is undoubtedly...