All posts tagged: alien

‘Alien: Romulus’ review: Fan Service Summer continues

Published by skeptic

A confession: Long before Alien: Romulus, I’ve not been much for Fede Álvarez’s brand of horror. His reboot of Evil Dead was so grisly that I saw a colleague who deeply loves a good scary movie flee the theater in revulsion. His Texas Chainsaw Massacre was likewise dripping with buckets of blood and viscera, as was his 2016 original thriller Don’t Breathe. It’s not the gore alone that put me off, but more how it heightened a bleakness so intense it might well steal your breath. It seems he revels in seeing his heroes suffer, providing little hope to his audience they’ll find a way out of it. That knocks the fun out of horror for me. This suffocating grimness soured me on Álvarez’s work. Frankly, I approached his spin on the Alien franchise with dread, even though I’ve relished this freaky franchise’s blend of body horror and alien terror for decades. But I was wrong to doubt him. To his credit — and to producer Ridley Scott’s as well — Álvarez’s signature stomach-churning violence and deeply …

This Is How Humans Find Alien Life on Mars

This Is How Humans Find Alien Life on Mars

Published by skeptic

Yesterday, NASA announced that one of its Mars rovers had sampled a very, very intriguing rock. At first glance, the rock looks much like the rest of the red planet—rugged, sepia-toned, dry. But it’s arguably the most exciting one that robotic space explorers have ever come across. The rock, NASA said in a press release, “possesses qualities that fit the definition of a possible indicator of ancient life.” Of course it would happen like this. In the midst of a historically eventful summer—an attempted assassination of a former president, the abrupt campaign exit of a sitting one, possibly the worst IT failure in history—scientists might have an alien discovery on their hands. To be clear, the rock, which scientists are calling Cheyava Falls, bears only potential evidence of fossilized life. There are other plausible explanations for its appearance and composition, mundane ones that have nothing to do with biological processes. Still, scientists are thrilled. “This is the exact type of rock that we came to Mars to find,” Briony Horgan, a planetary scientist at Purdue …

Dozens of stars show signs of Dyson spheres built by advanced alien civilisations

Dozens of stars show signs of Dyson spheres built by advanced alien civilisations

Published by skeptic

Dyson spheres could capture the energy from a star dotted zebra/Alamy Two surveys of millions of stars in our galaxy have revealed mysterious spikes in infrared heat coming from dozens of them. Astronomers say this could be evidence for alien civilisations harnessing energy from their stars by using a vast construction known as a Dyson sphere – although they can’t fully rule out more mundane explanations. First proposed in the 1960s, Dyson spheres are hypothesised structures that could surround entire stars to absorb their energy, a possible means by which advanced aliens might… Source link

AI may be to blame for our failure to make contact with alien civilisations

AI may be to blame for our failure to make contact with alien civilisations

Published by skeptic

Artificial intelligence (AI) has progressed at an astounding pace over the last few years. Some scientists are now looking towards the development of artificial superintelligence (ASI) — a form of AI that would not only surpass human intelligence but would not be bound by the learning speeds of humans. But what if this milestone isn’t just a remarkable achievement? What if it also represents a formidable bottleneck in the development of all civilisations, one so challenging that it thwarts their long-term survival? This idea is at the heart of a research paper I recently published in Acta Astronautica. Could AI be the universe’s “great filter” – a threshold so hard to overcome that it prevents most life from evolving into space-faring civilisations? This is a concept that might explain why the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (Seti) has yet to detect the signatures of advanced technical civilisations elsewhere in the galaxy. The great filter hypothesis is ultimately a proposed solution to the Fermi Paradox. This questions why, in a universe vast and ancient enough to host …

Cate Blanchett to Play Alien Invader in Zellner Brothers’ Comedy

Cate Blanchett to Play Alien Invader in Zellner Brothers’ Comedy

Published by Sam

Cate Blanchett has signed on to star in Alpha Gang, the new comedy from David and Nathan Zellner, the sibling duo behind wacky Sundance entry Sasquatch Sunset. The two-time Oscar winner is set to star as Alpha One, the leader of an alien gang sent on a mission to conquer Earth. She arrives disguised in human form together with her fellow extraterrestrials, posing as an armed and dangerous 1950’s leather-clad biker gang. But their ruthless plan is disrupted when the gang catches “the most toxic, contagious human disease of all: emotion.” David and Nathan Zellner will direct Alpha Gang as well as produce. Blanchett and Coco Francini are also on board as producers, through their Dirty Films outfit. Other producers include Ryan Zacarias for Fat City, and Gina Gammell for Felix Culpa. The film is set to being shooting this fall. “The Zellner brother’s work never fails to surprise and delight us,” said Blanchett and Francini in a joint statement. “In Alpha Gang, they have created a far-out world in order to lampoon something much …

Alien life might not be carbon-based, study finds

Alien life might not be carbon-based, study finds

Published by skeptic

A recent study suggests that life on other planets might not adhere to the same chemical principles as life on Earth. (CREDIT: Creative Commons) Mother Horta, from Star Trek: The Original Series, may have been the first-time an sapient, non-carbon-based, life form was depicted on television. The episode was called “The Devil in the Dark” and was first aired on March 9, 1967. The Horta were silicon-based lifeforms that looked like glowing mounds of lava and lived deep under the surface of planet Janus VI. They could tunnel through the Earth, live for thousands of years, and feed on rocks. A recent study suggests that life on other planets (like on Janus VI) might not adhere to the same chemical principles as life on Earth. While life here is based on organic compounds like carbon, scientists have speculated for years about the possibility of life forms relying on different chemistry. This intriguing possibility has implications for the search for extraterrestrial life and understanding the origins of life itself. The Mother Horta, from Star Trek: The …

Alien Earths: How to find habitable worlds in our galaxy

Alien Earths: How to find habitable worlds in our galaxy

Published by skeptic

This week, I have the pleasure of sharing with you my Q&A with Lisa Kaltenegger about her new book, Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos. Lisa is a world-renowned astrobiologist and the Director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University. Earlier this year, we published a joint paper with Sara Vannah proposing a new strategy for identifying planets that share similar characteristics with Earth at different times across its evolution. Life writes its presence on the atmospheres of planets, and the search for living worlds is in reality a search for the “biosignatures” that we associate with life, at least life as we know it. Apart from being an outstanding scientist, Lisa is one of the most engaging lecturers I know, and her infectious enthusiasm is ever present in her book, a must-read.  Explain what astrobiology is and why it is so exciting. How did you get into it? We live in an incredible epoch of exploration. We are discovering not merely new continents, like the explorers of old, …

Timothy Olyphant on the Status of ‘Justified,’ Reuniting With Walton Goggins, and Filming ‘Alien’

Timothy Olyphant on the Status of ‘Justified,’ Reuniting With Walton Goggins, and Filming ‘Alien’

Published by skeptic

There are interviews, and then there are interviews with Timothy Olyphant. This reminder arrives rather quickly as we settle in for a discussion ostensibly centered on the acclaimed revival of his hit FX series Justified, subtitled City Primeval, and the Emmy buzz surrounding it and his performance. On this week’s Little Gold Men (listen or read below), Olyphant proves far less interested in campaign-friendly sound bites. He’d rather just shoot the shit a bit and see where the conversation takes us. So that’s what we do. A veteran screen actor who broke out in HBO’s Emmy-winning Deadwood, Olyphant is coming off of an impressive doubleheader this season, between the welcome return of Raylan Givens in the new Justified and his expertly suave turn in Steven Soderbergh’s Max mystery, Full Circle. We chat about both shows. He’s speaking from Los Angeles, on a brief break from shooting Noah Hawley’s upcoming Alien series in Thailand. We chat about that too. Olyphant may joke that he’s reached his ceiling in terms of acting ability, but the fact is …

Alien: Rogue Incursion – In your Quest 3, everybody can hear you scream

Alien: Rogue Incursion – In your Quest 3, everybody can hear you scream

Published by skeptic

There seems to be an ever-growing number of horror games for the Quest 3, it is only a few days since we looked at Nope Challenge. VR is possibly the perfect format for the genre and so it is exciting that we are now going to get, from veteran VR developers at Survios, a licensed virtual reality game based in the universe of Alien – one of the most psychologically terrifying sci-fi franchises of all time. All we have so far in terms of pretty things to look at is an announcement trailer that features very little other than the game’s logo slowly emerging from the black, while some suitability Alien-esque drone noises play in the background. It’s a reveal trailer that actually reveals surprisingly little. We do get to find out though that the game is slated for release during ‘Holidays 2024’ so that to us means December sometime, so there is a little wait ahead of us before we can put our headsets on. As well as Quest 3 the game is coming …

‘We live in a golden time of exploration’: astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger on the hunt for signs of extraterrestrial life | Alien life

‘We live in a golden time of exploration’: astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger on the hunt for signs of extraterrestrial life | Alien life

Published by skeptic

Staring into the abyss… Am I really reaching anyone out there?” Lisa Kaltenegger is laughing about the unsatisfactory experience of teaching astrophysics over Zoom during Covid lockdowns, but she could be talking about her vocation: trying to discover if there’s life beyond our solar system. Kaltenegger founded the Carl Sagan Institute in 2015 to investigate just that. A burst of sunny energy and infectious enthusiasm on a grey day, she’s speaking to me from the legendary extraterrestrial life researcher’s old office, now hers, overlooking the leafy Cornell campus in upstate New York. The institute brings together researchers across a range of disciplines to work out what signs of life on other planets might look like from here, so that we recognise them if (or when) we find them. It’s a big job at the forefront of exceptionally hard science. Kaltenegger collaborates with Nasa, has won multiple awards and published extensively over two decades. But her latest project is no peer-reviewed paper: it’s a pop science book about the search for life. Alien Earths – at …