A group of researchers has unveiled a new venture that will use AI to search for alien technology. The Galileo Project will use a network of telescopes and astronomical surveys to hunt for evidence of "extraterrestrial technological civilizations" (ETCs). AI will play a key role in the program. The team plans to develop algorithms that scan data from telescopes for alien artifacts. Attend the tech festival of the year and get your super early bird ticket now!

An international group of researchers led by the Harvard astronomer who believes the first interstellar object discovered was a'lightsail' from another civilization have announced a new project to search for signs of'extraterrestrial technological civilizations' (ETCs) in space. Known as the Galileo Project, the researchers - led by Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb - will use artificial intelligence and look at data from existing and future astronomical surveys and high-resolution telescopes. The project will have three objectives: to search for unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), other interstellar objects like'Oumuamua and satellites created by ETCs. A new project will search for'extraterrestrial technological civilizations' in space has been announced. Pictured is the famous Tic-Tac footage, which has been previously acknowledged as real by the Navy.

In the introduction of his sixth book, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth , Avi Loeb, chair of the Harvard Department of Astronomy, acknowledges the elephant in the room: “In the spirit of transparency, know that some scientists find my hypothesis unfashionable, outside of mainstream science, even dangerously ill conceived. But the most egregious error we can make, I believe, is not to take this possibility seriously enough.” The provocative possibility he refers to is that an interstellar object known as 'Oumuamua (Hawaiian for “scout”), which passed through the Solar System in 2017, is an artificial object created by intelligent extraterrestrials. Loeb, a prolific academic author, meticulously walks the reader through his reasoning, describing how, after accounting for 'Oumuamua's various anomalies—its orbit, size, shape, and density; its origin in velocity-position space; and its lack of an icy tail, among other properties—he calculates that its chance of arising naturally is less than one in a trillion. With the odds seemingly stacked against the scientific consensus that the object is a naturally occurring space rock, he wonders why so many researchers refuse to consider what he believes is an equally likely scenario, that the object is artificial, especially given the long-appreciated probability that life exists beyond Earth. Loeb uses 'Oumuamua to criticize what he perceives to be a long-standing trend in science toward falling in step with conventional positions rather than staking out contrarian concepts. While he holds science fiction and modern entertainment partially responsible for sensationalizing extraterrestrial life, he also claims that the astrophysics community has been derisive of and hostile toward research that engages with the possibility of extraterrestrial life. The search for alien life is worth the cost, argues Loeb, especially given the resources dedicated to more-traditional fields that similarly lack tangible proof. “Despite the absence of experimental evidence,” he notes, “the mathematical ideas of supersymmetry, extra-spatial dimensions, string theory, Hawking radiation, and the multiverse are considered irrefutable and self-evident by the mainstream of theoretical physics.” Loeb argues that we are not prepared to respond should alien life eventually contact us. He suggests that new disciplines should be developed to address this discrepancy, including the emerging field of space archaeology, which he believes would be well suited to search for techno- and biosignatures of extinct civilizations. Regardless of the ultimate origins of 'Oumuamua, our cognitive dissonance with regard to alien life must be acknowledged. We added gold-plated disks to the Voyager probes and plaques to the Pioneer probes to introduce ourselves to potentially intelligent extraterrestrials, we have provided government funding to organizations such as the SETI Institute, and we continue to spend billions of dollars looking for life beyond Earth, yet no official protocols have been established for how to send out signals or how to respond to extraterrestrial communication that we may encounter as a result of, or in spite of, those efforts. “Even a nascent treaty agreed to by all terrestrial signatories would provide a framework for how we, as a species, respond to an encounter with a mature intelligence,” Loeb argues. Throughout the book, Loeb frames his nonconformist position on 'Oumuamua as a teaching opportunity for students. He implores young scientists to seek out data-driven areas of investigation that go beyond popular paradigms, describing a number of instances in which leading scientists of the past failed to think beyond convention and by doing so, potentially delayed or even impeded fertile areas of research. He writes, for example, of Charles Townes, who in 1954 was discouraged by Nobel laureates Isidor Isaac Rabi and Polykarp Kusch from continuing his line of research on masers (the forerunner of lasers), who insisted that the technology would never work. Fortunately, he ignored them and persevered. Masers are an integral component of some global navigation satellite systems. At the same time, Loeb entreats his peers to help foster research environments that encourage budding scientists to indulge their curiosity and seek out scientific truths. “If the flame of inquiry is to continue,” he writes, “it is incumbent on senior scholars to not only gather to themselves promising young scholars but to cultivate an environment within which the next generations of scientists can nurture discoveries despite their inherently unpredictable nature.”

Refined stellar yardstick helps astronomers improve stellar evolution models. A globular cluster as seen by the Hubble telescope. Researchers working on Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) efforts hunt for the same thing that their predecessors sought for decades--a sign that life arose, as Carl Sagan would say, on another humdrum planet around another humdrum star and rose up into something technologically advanced. It could happen any day. A weird, brief flash in the night sky.

An Astronomer has released our best and sharpest look to date at Comet Borisov, the second ever-known interstellar object to visit our solar system, using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to capture the new image. The comet was travelling at around 110,000 miles per hour when University of California Los Angeles astronomer David Jewitt studied it on October 12, 2019, when it was 260 million miles away. The comet -- which is named after the Crimean astronomer who discovered it -- will pass within around 177,000 miles (285,000 kilometres) of the Earth in early December this year. It is trailing behind it a 100,000 mile-long tail of dust, which is released as the comet melts in the Sun's glare. After this, it will head back out towards interstellar space, passing Jupiter around the middle of 2020.

Avi Loeb, 56, is chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University and has published more than 700 papers on astrophysical phenomena. His areas of interest include black holes and the birth of the first stars in the universe. More recently, Loeb has focused on the possible existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life, a topic on which he is currently writing a textbook. DER SPIEGEL: Professor Loeb, do you have a favorite alien? Loeb: To be honest, I don't like science fiction personally. I have a problem when the action in a movie violates the laws of physics. In those cases, I cannot enjoy the experience aesthetically. DER SPIEGEL: If you don't like aliens, why are you exploring the question of intelligent extraterrestrial life?

The same can be said of the science that happened this year. From a sun-bound space probe to controversial designer babies made by a rogue scientist, this year's science headlines read like chapter titles to a cheap sci-fi novel. NASA's Parker Solar Probe had a bumpy beginning, as a series of budget cuts in the 2000s relegated the mission to a mere twinkle in the agency's eye. But in August, the extraordinary probe, designed to study the sun from the very edge of its atmosphere, finally launched from the Space Launch Complex 37 at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Packed within the Parker Solar Probe's heat shield are a slew of instruments designed to measure electric and magnetic fields within the sun's corona and solar wind, transmitting that information back to astronomers on Earth for analysis.