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Paul Horowitz and the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence
I recently had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Harvard Professor Paul Horowitz. It’s a name you likely recognize. He is best known for his iconic book the Art of Electronics which is often...
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Jill Tarter: Searching for E.T.
What must it be like to devote your life to answering a single simple but monumental question: Are we alone? Astronomer Jill Tarter would know better than most what it’s like, and knows that the answer...
View ArticleAI Finds More Space Chatter
Scientists don’t know exactly what fast radio bursts (FRBs) are. What they do know is that they come from a long way away. In fact, one that occurs regularly comes from a galaxy 3 billion light years...
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Flagging Down Aliens with World’s Biggest Laser Pointer
As you’re no doubt aware, humans are a rather noisy species. Not just audibly, like in the case of somebody talking loudly when you’re in a movie theater, but also electromagnetically. All of our...
View ArticleHackaday Links: February 23, 2020
If you think your data rates suck, take pity on New Horizons. The space probe, which gave us lovely pictures of the hapless one-time planet Pluto after its 2015 flyby, continued to plunge and explore...
View ArticleFarewell SETI@Home
It was about 21 years ago that Berkley started one of the first projects that would allow you to donate idle computing time to scientific research. In particular, your computer could help crunch data...
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Hackaday Links: November 22, 2020
Remember DSRC? If the initialism doesn’t ring a bell, don’t worry — Dedicated Short-Range Communications, a radio service intended to let cars in traffic talk to each other, never really caught on....
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The Wow! Signal and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
On a balmy August evening in 1977, an enormous radio telescope in a field in the middle of Ohio sat silently listening to the radio universe. Shortly after 10:00 PM, the Earth’s rotation slewed the...
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Did ET Finally Call Us?
An Australian radio telescope picked up unusual signals back in 2019 and thinks they originated from Proxima Centauri, a scant 4.3 light years from our blue marble. Researchers caution that it almost...
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Ask Hackaday: If Aliens Came By, Would We Even Notice?
A few years ago we talked about the chance that the first known extrasolar visitor — Oumuamua — might be a derelict solar sail. That notion has been picking up steam in the popular press lately, and it...
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Hackaday Links: June 19, 2022
The James Webb Space Telescope has had a long and sometimes painful journey from its earliest conception to its ultimate arrival at Lagrange point L2 and subsequent commissioning. Except for the...
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Frank Drake’s Legacy, Or: Are We All Alone In The Universe?
When Frank Drake began his astronomy career in the late 1950s, this was an incredibly exciting time for the field. Humanity was beginning to unlock the secrets of the Universe using ever more powerful...
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The Wow! Signal Revisited: Citizen Science Informs SETI Effort
As far as interesting problems go, few can really compete with the perennial question: “Are we alone?” The need to know if there are other forms of intelligent life out there in the galaxy is deeply...
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Simulated ET to Phone Home From Mars this Afternoon
In science fiction movies, communicating with aliens is easy. In real life, though, we think it will be tough. Today, you’ll get your chance to see how tough when a SETI project uses the European Space...
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Hackaday Links: June 4, 2023
A report released this week suggests that 50 flights into its five-flight schedule, the Mars helicopter might be starting to show its age. The report details a protracted communications outage...
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Using Gravitational Lensing To Transmit Power And Detect Aliens
Most of us will have at some point have bought a long power cable to charge the bike on the deck, but [Slava G. Turyshev] has a slightly more ambitious idea. In this recent paper, he outlines how an...
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Harvard SETI Project Helps ID Mystery Sound
Last month, thousands of people in New Hampshire took to social media to report an explosion in the sky that was strong enough to rattle windows. Naturally aliens were blamed by some, while cooler...
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Hackaday Links: January 14, 2024
How long does it take a team of rocket scientists to remove two screws? When the screws they’re working on are keeping a priceless sample of asteroid safe, it’s about three months. That’s how long NASA...
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Avi Loeb and the Interstellar Lottery
Except for rare occasions, I don’t play the lottery. Like many of you, I consider state-run lotteries to be a tax paid only by people who can’t do math. That’s kind of arrogant coming from a guy who...
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The Hunt For Alien Radio Signals Began Sooner Than You Think
Every 26 months, Earth and Mars come tantalizingly close by virtue of their relative orbits. The closest they’ve been in recent memory was a mere 55.7 million kilometers, a proximity not seen in 60,000...
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