An exploration of how old the first alien civilizations could be, or how early in the history of the universe were planets possible.
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In their 1982 paper, Fredkin and Toffoli had begun developing their work on reversible computation in a rather different direction. It started with a seemingly frivolous analogy: a billiard table. They showed how mathematical computations could be represented by fully reversible billiard-ball interactions, assuming a frictionless table and balls interacting without friction.
This physical manifestation of the reversible concept grew from Toffoli’s idea that computational concepts could be a better way to encapsulate physics than the differential equations conventionally used to describe motion and change. Fredkin took things even further, concluding that the whole Universe could actually be seen as a kind of computer. In his view, it was a ‘cellular automaton’: a collection of computational bits, or cells, that can flip states according to a defined set of rules determined by the states of the cells around them. Over time, these simple rules can give rise to all the complexities of the cosmos — even life.
He wasn’t the first to play with such ideas. Konrad Zuse — a German civil engineer who, before the Second World War, had developed one of the first programmable computers — suggested in his 1969 book Calculating Space that the Universe could be viewed as a classical digital cellular automaton. Fredkin and his associates developed the concept with intense focus, spending years searching for examples of how simple computational rules could generate all the phenomena associated with subatomic particles and forces3.
Despite the vast number of planets in the cosmos, Earth’s evolutionary history guarantees that its life forms (including humans) are unique.
Researchers from Queen Mary University of London have made a discovery that could change our understanding of the universe. In their study published in Science Advances, they reveal, for the first time, that there is a range in which fundamental constants can vary, allowing for the viscosity needed for life processes to occur within and between living cells. This is an important piece of the puzzle in determining where these constants come from and how they impact life as we know it.
In 2020, the same team found that the viscosity of liquids is determined by fundamental physical constants, setting a limit on how runny a liquid can be. Now this result is taken into the realm of life sciences.
Fundamental physical constants shape the fabric of the universe we live in. Physical constants are quantities with a value that is generally believed to be both universal in nature and to remain unchanged over time—for example the mass of the electron. They govern nuclear reactions and can lead to the formation of molecular structures essential to life, but their origin is unknown. This research might bring scientists one step closer to determining where these constants come from.
That may have been potentially a bad idea.
If we’re ever going to have confirmation of Alien-life, today could be the day, scientists have said. It all began when Japanese astronomers Masaki Morimoto and Hisashi Hirabayashi used a Stanford University telescope 40 years ago to put out a radio signal towards a star called Altair, which was 16.7 light years away.
Why didn’t they send pictures instead of a kid’s drawings? I would be embarrassed to send those to anyone to explain the origin of our species.
Narusawa, 58, believes intelligent life lingers somewhere in the universe, and it’s possible a planet in Altair’s solar system could be harboring intelligent extraterrestrial life.
“Altair may have a planet whose environment can sustain life,” he told the outlet.
These and other missions on the horizon will face the same obstacle that has plagued scientists since they first attempted to search for signs of Martian biology with the Viking landers in the 1970s: There is no definitive signature of life.
That might be about to change. In 2021, a team led by Lee Cronin of the University of Glasgow in Scotland and Sara Walker of Arizona State University proposed a very general way to identify molecules made by living systems—even those using unfamiliar chemistries. Their method, they said, simply assumes that alien life forms will produce molecules with a chemical complexity similar to that of life on Earth.
Called assembly theory, the idea underpinning the pair’s strategy has even grander aims. As laid out in a recent series of publications, it attempts to explain why apparently unlikely things, such as you and me, even exist at all. And it seeks that explanation not, in the usual manner of physics, in timeless physical laws, but in a process that imbues objects with histories and memories of what came before them. It even seeks to answer a question that has perplexed scientists and philosophers for millennia: What is life, anyway?
The classic film “Alien” was once promoted with the tagline “In space, no one can hear you scream.” Physicists Zhuoran Geng and Ilari Maasilta from the Nanoscience Center at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, have demonstrated that, on the contrary, in certain situations, sound can be transmitted strongly across a vacuum region.
In a recent article published in Communications Physics they show that in some cases, a sound wave can jump or “tunnel” fully across a vacuum gap between two solids if the materials in question are piezoelectric. In such materials, vibrations (sound waves) produce an electrical response as well, and since an electric field can exist in vacuum, it can transmit the sound waves.
The requirement is that the size of the gap is smaller than the wavelength of the sound wave. This effect works not only in audio range of frequencies (Hz–kHz), but also in ultrasound (MHz) and hypersound (GHz) frequencies, as long as the vacuum gap is made smaller as the frequencies increase.
Alien enthusiasts have a new reason to get excited about potential life on Mars, after scientists found cracked mud on the Red Planet.
A recent research paper showed that the conditions that created cracks in the surface of Mars might have been favourable for microscopic life to thrive.
While scientists don’t yet know how life on Earth began, a prevalent theory is that repeated cycles of wet and dry conditions might have helped build the complex chemical building blocks needed for microbial life.
Albert Einstein is considered one of the most brilliant minds in history. Not only was he a great physicist who transformed the way we see the universe, but he had profound wisdom about life itself.
Let’s take a fresh look at some of his illuminating philosophies.
