Even the first reports of an extraterrestrial landing in a London suburb do not shake the indifference of the ordinary folk convinced that their daily routines are inviolable.
"With infinite complacency," Wells writes, "men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter." The locals casually referred to the crashed Martian capsule as "the Thing."
This is not a war between humans. With their superior intellect, the Martians regard Earthlings in much the way Earthlings regard ants at a picnic: totally expendable and easy to crush. The space aliens demonstrate their overwhelming power through their horrible weapons of war — towering, 20-story weapons of war called "tripods" throwing flames and spewing black, poisonous gas. The British army's latest firepower barely dents them.
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Is there anybody out there?
That search is accelerating. As Dr Siemion told this year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science ( AAAS ), in Seattle, better telescopes, faster computers, the discovery of thousands of planets circling stars other than the sun, and an influx of money and scientific talent are transforming the field. What was once a fringe activity has now become mainstream.
They will brighten further with the launch, in 2021, of the James Webb Space Telescope and the opening of new observatories on the ground, such as the Extremely Large Telescope ( ELT ) in Chile. These will be able to repeat, for some nearby exoplanets, the first of Sagan's experiments with Galileo —the search for biosignatures. But, even if they find them, exciting as that would be, it would say nothing about the crucial final letter in SETI , the "I" for intelligence.
Exploradio Origins: A New Way to Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence | WKSU
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Looking for lights
Some of you may have heard of SETI: the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The idea is that if there's an advanced alien civilization, they'd try to contact us using radio. So we should look for radio signals from space that look like messages.
"In the 21st century, if you ask how do we communicate the most efficient amount of information over the longest distances, the answer is not radio, it's fiber optics and optical and infrared signals that are going through cables," said Corbin Covault, professor of physics at Case Western Reserve University. "And indeed if you could have a pulsed laser, you could actually send information much more efficiently in the optical and infrared than you can in the radio."
Space Business: Lawless Moon — Space Business — Quartz
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Metaphors make sense of the past. Can they guide us toward a post-coronavirus future?
Amid shortages of food, toilet paper and hand sanitizer, resource hoarders are seeking to turn a profit. Lies, falsehoods and disinformation from political leaders abound. So does racism and xenophobia, at times fueled by calling the novel coronavirus the "Wuhan" or "Chinese virus," as some prominent Republicans have done. These times also make clear that those most vulnerable to the virus and its effects are the poor, uninsured and immunosuppressed.
In fact, we can at least find some loose parallels between our world and the one presented in movies and shows like AMC's "The Walking Dead," which tells the story of a group of survivors navigating a post-apocalyptic world in which zombies roam the earth.
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