All posts tagged: alien

Steven Spielberg Debuts First Look at Movie’s Alien

Steven Spielberg Debuts First Look at Movie’s Alien

Published by Daniella Wilson

Steven Spielberg took the stage at CinemaCon for the first time in his career to promote his upcoming Universal release, Disclosure Day. After an introduction from star Colman Domingo, the filmmaker received rapturous applause from the annual convention of movie theater owners in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Spielberg accepted the Motion Picture Association’s America250 Award from the group’s chair, Charles Rivkin, in celebration of the director’s work that embraces the nation’s wonders. “I haven’t done a Western yet — that’s next,” the 79-year-old director said. He noted that his first CinemaCon stage appearance had been great: “This will not be my last, I promise.” He recalled his transformative first visit to the cinema: “Nothing could compete with sitting in the first three rows of a movie palace, watching a Cecil B. DeMille epic with color by Technicolor. Nothing would ever be the same.” Spielberg admitted, “Sometimes, it feels to me like a cage fight between the small screen and the big screen.” He noted that the theatergoing experience was “clobbered” by COVID but added, “There …

The labor economics of ‘Alien’ — and its lessons for inequality on Earth : Planet Money : NPR

The labor economics of ‘Alien’ — and its lessons for inequality on Earth : Planet Money : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

This article first appeared in the Planet Money newsletter. You can sign up here. OK, hear me out. I’m about to get into a new book with a provocative argument about why income inequality has exploded in America and how to fight it. But at the center of this very serious economic book is a concept that has me thinking a lot about … the labor economics of the movie Alien. You know, the classic sci-fi horror movie starring Sigourney Weaver, with that diabolical alien — the “Xenomorph” — which has inspired like a dozen other movies and TV shows in the years since. It provides a sort of extreme example of an economic phenomenon that this book and an increasing number of economists suggest is a lurking monster in the labor market that needs to be confronted. A central storyline in Alien franchise goes something like this: In 2099, a British company and a Japanese company merged to create the all-powerful Weyland-Yutani Corporation, a multi-planetary conglomerate with tentacles in artificial intelligence, robotics, terraforming, mining, …

What If Cephalopods Are the Closest Thing to Alien Intelligence?

What If Cephalopods Are the Closest Thing to Alien Intelligence?

Published by Sam Flores

Summary Cephalopods represent an “alien” intelligence on Earth, having evolved on a separate path from vertebrates for 600 million years. Unlike humans, their intelligence uses a distributed nervous system, with the majority of neurons located directly in their arms. Octopuses exhibit advanced problem-solving and tool use, like carrying coconut shells to build shelter or escaping complex enclosures. They challenge our anthropocentric view of intelligence, proving that complex minds can exist without human-like language or technology. Show more   Imagine evolution running its course again on a distant planet, producing intelligent life. Would it inevitably lead to creatures like us, with a central nervous system, complex language, and technology? Or could intelligence take a radically different form? This isn’t science fiction. Evolution did, in fact, run a second, independent experiment in crafting complex minds right here on Earth, diverging from our own path over half a billion years ago. The result? Ladies and gentlemen, the cephalopods! Marine animals whose intelligence challenges our assumptions about what a mind is and how it should work offer perhaps our best glimpse of an extraterrestrial …

To alien eyes, Earth looks deceptively peaceful

To alien eyes, Earth looks deceptively peaceful

Published by Jenni Sidey

Of all the planets, star systems, and galaxies we’ve ever discovered, the only one that displays any yet-detected signals of life is right here: planet Earth which orbits the Sun right here in our own Milky Way. While there are: hundreds of known planetary bodies in our own Solar System, more than 6000 known exoplanets detected so far, approximately 400 billion stars located within the Milky Way, and trillions of galaxies within the observable Universe, each one of them only represents a chance for life and living beings here in 2026. At present, only Earth, of all the known worlds, and only our Solar System, out of the 2 × 10²¹ stars suspected to exist in the visible Universe, has been demonstrated to have living organisms thriving upon it. But any world that’s home to life is also, inevitably, going to be home to death as well. Earth may be the only known planet with life on it, but it’s also the only known planet with war, conflict, and murder on it as well. From …

What are starseeds? The alien subculture offering a conspiratorial spiritual escape

What are starseeds? The alien subculture offering a conspiratorial spiritual escape

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — “Are you a starseed? Do you feel like you’re an old soul?” asked influencer Elizabeth April, smiling with understanding in an Instagram video on Feb. 13, 2020. “Well, you’re definitely not alone, because there are many of us out there, and we’re all struggling, and we’re all feeling awkward on this planet, and we all feel like the cosmos are our home.” April’s post got 451 likes six years ago, but these days, her videos about aliens, clones and “chosen ones” regularly rack up tens of thousands of likes. Now age 33, April describes herself as an alien inhabiting an earthly body to aid humanity — and if you’ve ever felt out of place, she tells her nearly 400,000 Instagram followers, you’re probably one, too. Starseeds identify as galactic souls fighting a cosmic battle between good and evil, often by disclosing hidden truths via social media posts. The New Age phenomenon has been around for decades, but online interest skyrocketed during the pandemic, and content with #starseed has over a billion views on …

The 45 planets most likely to host alien life, according to astronomers

The 45 planets most likely to host alien life, according to astronomers

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Life on Earth is a precious thing, especially given what astronomers know about the visible universe. Although researchers have so far identified over 6,000 exoplanets beyond our solar system, only a handful of them may be suitable for human visitors. While society hopefully won’t encounter an apocalyptic scenario like the one depicted in Project Hail Mary, a team at Cornell University’s Carl Sagan Institute has compiled a list of planetary nominees worth a closer look. You know…just in case. Unfortunately, the roster is a bit slim. According to their study published on March 19 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, scientists believe only 45 rocky planets are located in a habitable zone near their respective stars—and that’s being generous. A more conservative estimate, factoring in a narrower habitable zone based on solar heat, lowers the number down to 24 worlds. A diagram depicting habitable zone boundaries across star type with rocky exoplanets from Bohl et al. (2026). The boundaries of the …

Molten alien planet with sulfur-choked atmosphere displays unique hellscape

Molten alien planet with sulfur-choked atmosphere displays unique hellscape

Published by Sam Flores

WASHINGTON, March 16 : Astronomers have spotted a planet orbiting a star in our neighborhood of the Milky Way galaxy that presents a unique hellscape – covered with a perpetual ocean of magma and enveloped by a noxious and fiercely hot sulfur-rich atmosphere. The molten planet’s diameter is more than 60 per cent greater than Earth, though its density is only about 40 per cent that of our planet. It orbits a star smaller and dimmer than the sun located about 34 light-years from Earth in the constellation Volans. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). “The planet lacks distinct structure within its magma ocean, so there is no crust, upper mantle and lower mantle. The magma ocean is a single deep, mushy layer,” said Harrison Nicholls, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge Institute of Astronomy and lead author of the research published on Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. Small crystals of solid rock may be trapped within the turbulent fluid magma comprising …

Something May Be Scrambling Alien Messages, NASA-Funded Research Finds

Something May Be Scrambling Alien Messages, NASA-Funded Research Finds

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech If intelligent aliens are out there, why aren’t we hearing from them? Are they silently observing us like zoo animals, or staying quiet out of fear that they’d catch the attention of a bloodthirsty civilization? Those are spooky Fermi paradox solutions to contemplate indeed. But if they’re a little too sci-fi for your taste, new research funded by NASA from the SETI Institute provides a physics-based solution to this famous conundrum: bad “space weather.” The study, published in the The Astrophysical Journal, focuses on how potential extraterrestrial signals being beamed into the cosmos could be scrambled by common astronomical phenomena, like solar storms and plasma turbulence near an alien home world. These volatile events could broaden the narrow frequency of the potential alien signals, spreading them thin across multiple frequencies and making them nearly undetectable to most SETI searches, which focus on narrow bands. “If a signal gets broadened by its own star’s environment, it can slip below …

Steven Spielberg says Barack Obama’s alien comments are ‘so great for ‘Disclosure Day”

Steven Spielberg says Barack Obama’s alien comments are ‘so great for ‘Disclosure Day”

Published by skeptic

During a jam-packed SXSW panel about his career, director Steven Spielberg talked everything from Disclosure Day to aliens to President Barack Obama. And yes, all these topics are related. Disclosure Day follows a cybersecurity administrator (Josh O’Connor) who decides to expose a massive secret: that humans aren’t alone in the universe. It marks Spielberg’s return to UFOs and aliens, subject matter he’s already well-versed in thanks to films like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. SEE ALSO: ‘Disclosure Day’ trailer: Steven Spielberg and aliens remain a match made in heaven The film’s story of a government cover-up of alien activity comes at a pertinent time, as President Obama recently discussed his own belief in aliens on Brian Tyler Cohen’s No Lie podcast. “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” Obama said in a speed round portion of the interview, before clarifying the aliens are “not being kept in Area 51.” As Spielberg told panel host Sean Fennessey, “When President Obama made that comment, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is so …

Space weather near stars may be hiding alien signals from Earth

Space weather near stars may be hiding alien signals from Earth

Published by Jenni Sidey

Radio silence has long puzzled those searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, but the answer might lie much closer to the source of potential signals than previously thought. Conditions around other stars could be scrambling even intentionally narrow radio transmissions, making them nearly invisible by the time they reach Earth. Even a perfectly precise signal sent by an advanced civilization could arrive as a smeared, diluted trace if its own star’s plasma environment is turbulent enough. Dr. Vishal Gajjar, an astronomer at the SETI Institute and lead author of the study, explained, “SETI searches are often optimized for extremely narrow signals. If a signal gets broadened by its own star’s environment, it can slip below our detection thresholds, even if it’s there, potentially helping explain some of the radio silence we’ve seen in technosignature searches.” His team’s research, part of the institute’s STRIDE program, focuses on how the immediate surroundings of a transmitting planet affect signals before they even leave their home system. For decades, SETI projects have concentrated on narrowband radio waves—very sharp spikes in frequency …