Aliens used to look more or less like humans in the films of the 1950s. Think Michael Rennie in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), a polished alien presence if there ever was one. We got humanoid aliens with strange powers or technologies, like Jeff Morrow playing Exeter in This Island Earth (1955) -- a prominent forehead and strange hair is all it takes. Even James Arness' vegetable man (The Thing from Another World, 1951), although seen but briefly and on a rampage, is recognizably humanoid. Image: James Arness makes his appearance in Howard Hawks' The Thing from Another World. I watched all those films and many other SF movies besides when I was growing up, almost all on TV re-runs. Later, special effects would vastly improve, and non-humanoid aliens thrived, my favorite being the repulsive title character in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), so dramatically visualized by Swiss surrealist Hans Rudolf Giger. Now we see aliens in all shapes and sizes, from the many-toothed predator...

The relentless expansion implicit in the Kardashev scale ranks civilizations according to their use of power, with the notion that there is an upward movement from exploiting the energy resources of a planet to the entire home star and then on to the galaxy (Type III). Hence the interest in trying to observe civilizations that operate on such colossal scales. Surely a Kardashev Type III culture would, in its manipulation of such titanic energies, cast a signature that would be observable even by a relatively lowly Type .7 civilization like ours. So far we see no signs of Type III civilizations, though early searches through our astronomical data continue (see G-HAT: Searching For Kardashev Type III, for example, which gets into the Glimpsing Heat from Alien Technologies work at Penn State). In Earth in Human Hands, David Grinspoon relates the question to our own survival challenges as we deal with the so-called Anthropocene, a time when our technologies are increasingly affecting our...

Think fast. You’ve only got a day or so to work on this. You’ve been asked to come up with a plausible way of getting a fictional crew from one star to another, but laser sails and fusion rockets won’t do. The target might be thousands of light years away, so you have to be thinking faster-than-light. Maybe Miguel Alcubierre comes to mind, or perhaps a wormhole, but a nod in either direction isn’t enough. You’re being asked for a high level of detail, and you’d better have some serious equations available to show you’re not just blowing smoke. As you might guess, the question relates to the Denis Villeneuve film Arrival, which Paramount released in the U.S. last Friday following its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. No spoilers here, just an entertaining tale. For the person who was asked to dream up fast interstellar transport was Stephen Wolfram, whose public relations people had received a request from the filmmakers to upgrade the science in the film, which was based on a...

The founder of the Tau Zero Foundation takes a look at the promise of Star Trek, and asks where we stand with regard to the many technologies depicted in the series. My own first memory of Star Trek is seeing a first year episode and realizing only a few days later that it had been one of the few times a TV science fiction show never mentioned the Earth. That was an expansive and refreshing perspective-changer from the normal fare of 1966, though back then I would never have dreamed how much traction the show would gain over time. But with the series now a cultural icon, how about Starfleet's tech? Will any of it actually be achieved? by Marc Millis This week marks the 50th anniversary of Star Trek's debut. In just 3 seasons, the series started a cultural ripple effect that's still going. The starship Enterprise became an icon for a better future - predicting profound technical abilities, matched with a rewardingly responsible society, and countless wonders left to explore. Many...

No one thinks big better than Adam Crowl, a Centauri Dreams regular and mainstay of the Icarus Interstellar attempt to reconfigure the Project Daedalus starship design of the 1970's. If you're looking for ideas for science fiction stories, you'll find them in the essay below, where Adam considers the uses to which we might put the abundant energies of the Sun. Starships are a given, but what about terraforming not just one but many Solar System objects? Can we imagine a distant future when our own Moon is awash with seas, and snow is falling on a Venus in the process of transformation? To keep up with Adam, be sure to check his Crowlspace site regularly. It's where I found an earlier version of this now updated and revised essay. By Adam Crowl By 2025 Elon Musk believes SpaceX can get us to Mars - a journey of about 500 million kilometres, needing a speed of over 100,000 km/h. By comparison travelling to the stars within a human lifetime via the known laws of physics requires...

We get to the stars one step at a time, or as the ever insightful Lao Tzu put it long ago, ?"You accomplish the great task by a series of small acts." Right now, of course, many of the necessary ‘acts’ seem anything but small, but as Ian Crawford explains below, they’re a necessary part of building up the kind of space economy that will result in a true infrastructure, one that can sustain the exploration of space at the outskirts of our own system and beyond. Dr. Crawford is Professor of Planetary Science and Astrobiology in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London. Today he brings us a report on a discussion of these matters at the Royal Astronomical Society earlier this year. By Ian A. Crawford There is increasing interest in the possibility of using the energy and material resources of the solar system to build a space economy, and in recent years a number of private companies have been established with the stated aim of developing...

I hadn't planned the conjunction of the Breakthrough Starshot forum's opening here on Centauri Dreams and the interesting news out of the NASA budget for 2017, but some things just fall into your lap. In any case, what happened in Washington makes a nice follow-up to yesterday's post, considering that it calls up visions of fast probes to Alpha Centauri, and in a document coming out of the U.S. House of Representatives, of all things. As more than a few readers have noted, it's not often that we hear interstellar issues discussed in the halls of Congress. Call for a New Interstellar Study The specifics are that space-minded John Culberson (R-TX), who has championed space exploration with abandon, has made sure that NASA will look at the possibilities of interstellar travel. Culberson chairs the House of Representatives sub-panel in charge of NASA appropriations, and the call for interstellar study comes in a report that accompanies the bill establishing the agency's budget for the...

Ever since coming back from the Breakthrough Discuss meeting in Palo Alto, I have been pondering the enormous issues the Breakthrough Starshot project will encounter. Getting a tiny spacecraft up to twenty percent of lightspeed is only the beginning of an effort that has to deal with power generation, a phased laser array of enormous strength and complexity, the miniaturization of critical components, lightsail integrity under thrust and much more. These topics were freely discussed in Palo Alto, and especially at the Yuri's Night party that Yuri Milner threw for the assembled conference goers. When I talked to Milner at the party, he suggested an idea that we have been working on ever since. In order to keep the discussion on the critical issues involving Breakthrough Starshot in front of the interstellar community, why not set up a linkage between the discussion areas of the Breakthrough site and Centauri Dreams? This site would maintain its usual structure and separate comments,...

Before we can go to the stars we'll need to build a robust infrastructure in our own Solar System. While most attention seems to be devoted to propulsion issues, I'm convinced that an equally critical question is how we can create and sustain closed-loop life support systems for such missions. Our point man on this is Ioannis Kokkinidis, who brings a rich background from his Master of Science in Agricultural Engineering (Agricultural University of Athens) and Mastère Spécialisé Systèmes d'informations localisées pour l'aménagement des territoires from AgroParisTech and AgroMontpellier, along with a PhD in Geospatial and Environmental Analysis from Virginia Tech. Here Dr. Kokkinidis discusses what has been done so far in the matter of growing foods in space, and takes us back to a mission that might have been, a manned flyby of Venus. As Ioannis notes, getting space foods up to the sumptuous standards of Greek cuisine will indeed be a challenge, but we're...

As we move into the outer Solar System and beyond, the possibility exists that we may encounter an extraterrestrial species engaged in similar exploration. How we approach first contact has been a theme of science fiction for many years (Murray Leinster's 1945 story 'First Contact' is a classic treatment). In the essay below, Ken Wisian looks at how we can develop contact protocols to handle such a situation. A Major General in the US Air Force (now retired) with combat experience in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, Ken brings a perspective seasoned by command and a deep knowledge of military history to issues of confrontation and outcomes, building on our current rules of engagement to ask how we will manage an encounter with another civilization, one whose consequences would be momentous for our species. By Ken Wisian Ph.D Galactic Ventures LLC, Austin, Texas Abstract How do two ships approach each other in a first contact setting? When it happens it will be a pivotal moment for...

Cameron Smith is no stranger to these pages, having examined the role of evolution in human expansion into space (see Biological Evolution in Interstellar Human Migration), cultural changes on interstellar journeys (Human Universals and Cultural Evolution on Interstellar Voyages), as well as the composition of worldship crews (Optimal Worldship Populations). An anthropologist and prehistorian at Portland State University, Dr. Smith today offers up his thoughts on the emerging discipline he calls space anthropology. How do we adapt a field that has grown up around the origin and growth of our species to a far future in which humans may take our forms of culture and consciousness deep into the galaxy? What follows is the preface for Dr. Smith's upcoming book Principles of Space Anthropology: Establishing an Evolutionary Science of Human Space Settlement, to be published by Springer later this year. By Cameron M. Smith, PhD New Realms of Action Require New Domains of Expertise In 1963,...

The Breakthrough Initiatives conference I've just returned from, called Breakthrough Discuss 2016, had been a bit of a puzzle going in. Still bleary after an early morning arrival in Palo Alto, I was looking forward to getting to the Stanford campus for the first sessions the next day. Breakfasting at a small cafe near the hotel, I mulled over the possibilities. The emphasis was on astronomy, given the list of attendees, which included top names in the exoplanet hunt, but of course Breakthrough Initiatives is also funding a major SETI effort, so that would be a theme. And then there was the looming presence of the just announced Breakthrough Starshot. Balancing all this out looked to be a challenge, but as it turned out, there was a strong cross-pollination among the various themes, with the Starshot -- an unmanned flyby of Alpha Centauri and an infrastructure to sustain a further interstellar effort -- woven into the proceedings. I knew I'd come back with material for a week's worth...

Expect no new posts until Monday and a slowdown in comment moderation as I attend the Breakthrough Initiatives event in Palo Alto. As has been my practice at previous such events, I won't try to cover the talks and discussions live. While 'live blogging' has its place and seems to work for things like product introductions, I don't find it useful for scientific conferences, where I need to take lots of notes and think about the implications of what I've written. But I'll come back from Stanford with plenty of things to talk about, and we'll use all of next week sorting them out. Dinner tonight with Jim and Greg Benford, my son Miles, and my old friend Claudio Maccone, with whom I'll be talking SETI, the FOCAL mission (to the Sun's gravity lens), and the best methods of data retrieval for a mission like Breakthrough Starshot. Many more good discussions ahead. SETI is a big part of this conference, but Alpha Centauri looms large.

Marc Millis is once again in the media, this time interviewed by a BBC crew in a show about controlling gravity. The impetus is an undertaking I described in the first chapter of Frontiers of Propulsion Science, Project Greenglow. The former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project and founding architect of the Tau Zero Foundation, as well as co-editor with Eric Davis of the aforesaid book, Millis has some thoughts on how we discuss these matters in the media, and offers clarifications on how work on futuristic technologies should proceed. by Marc Millis A BBC 'Horizons' episode will air next Wednesday, March 23 (8pm UK) about the Quest for Gravity Control. The show features, among other things, an interview with myself about my related work during NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project and thereafter with the Tau Zero Foundation. Quoting from an advertisement for the show, Project Greenglow - The Quest for Gravity Control: This is the story of an extraordinary...

Herewith the first of several reports on the recent Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop; more next week. It comes from Doug Loss, who was a participant in the Homo Stellaris working track I had hoped to attend before illness changed my plans. An experienced network and IT security administrator, Doug attended and eventually organized The Asimov Seminar from 1977 until the early 2000s, a yearly, four-day-long retreat at a conference center in upstate New York. Isaac Asimov, the noted science fiction author, was the star of the Seminar and its main draw until his death in 1992. Each year the Seminar would explore a different topic having to do with the future of human society, with Seminar attendees assuming roles that would allow them to examine the questions associated with that year's topic on a personal basis. TVIW is likewise following a highly interactive workshop strategy, as Doug's report attests. The photos below come from New York photojournalist Joey O'Loughlin, and are...

I often think about virtual reality and the prospect of immersive experience of distant worlds using data returned by our probes. But what of the state of virtual reality today, a technology that is suddenly the talk of the computer world with the imminent release of the Oculus Rift device? Frank Taylor is just the man to ask. He has worked with computer graphics since the 1970s, starting at the University of Arizona. He worked several years at aerospace companies in support of DoD and NASA including simulation and virtual reality technology in support of astronaut training at NASA JSC. Frank has also been a successful entrepreneur doing work with Internet and other computer technologies. His most notable recent accomplishment was the completion of one orbit of the Earth at 0 MSL - he and his wife left in 2009 and sailed around the world arriving back in the US in 2015. Frank is the publisher of Google Earth Blog since 2005. Have a look now at the surprisingly wide possibilities...

His interest fired by an interview with interstellar researcher Greg Matloff, Dale Tarnowieski became fascinated with the human future in deep space. One result is the piece that follows, an essay that feeds directly into a recent wish of mine. I had been struck by how many people coming to Centauri Dreams are doing so for the first time, and thinking that I would like to run the occasional overview article placing the things we discuss here in a broader context. Dale's essay does precisely this, looking at our future as a species on time frames that extend to the death of our planet. Dale retired in January 2015 from the position of assistant director of communications with New York City College of Technology/CUNY, a veteran journalist and editor of "Connections," the college's print and online magazine. He also did considerable writing for the New York City College of Technology Foundation and its annual Best of New York Award Dinner (and continues to do so on a freelance basis)....

Because Centauri Dreams focuses on the outer system and beyond, I haven't had much to say about Mars, knowing how many good sites there are that cover developments there. But today's post is timely not only because of recent depictions of Mars in film but also because long-term sustainability is critical to a lasting human presence off-world. Dr. Ioannis Kokkinidis is a native of Piraeus, Greece. He graduated with a Master of Science in Agricultural Engineering from the Department of Natural Resources Management and Agricultural Engineering of the Agricultural University of Athens. He holds a Mastère Spécialisé Systèmes d'informations localisées pour l'aménagement des territoires (SILAT) from AgroParisTech and AgroMontpellier and a PhD in Geospatial and Environmental Analysis from Virginia Tech. Have a look now at what we could do to sustain a human settlement on another world. By Ioannis Kokkinidis I believe most readers of this blog have seen Ridley...

The very small may lead us to the very large. Payload sizes, for one thing, can be shrunk as we increasingly master the art of miniaturization, giving us far more bang for the buck. In that sense, we can think about tiny interstellar probes that may one day be sent, as Robert Freitas has envisioned, in waves of exploration, each of them no larger than a sewing needle, but armed with artificial intelligence and capable of swarm-like behavior. Mastering the tiny thus enables the longest of all journeys. But thinking about small payloads also makes me ponder much larger constructs. Suppose in a hundred years we can work at the atomic level to build structures out of the abundant raw material available in the asteroid or Kuiper belts. It's possible to imagine enormous arcologies of the kind discussed by Gerard O'Neill that may one day house substantial human populations. In this way nanotech opens the door to renovation in the realm of gigantic colony worlds. And if one of these colony...

It's been awhile since I've seen Ian Crawford (Birkbeck College, London) -- I think we last talked at one of the 100 Year Starship events -- but I'm pleased to see his latest popular essay How to build a starship - and why we should start thinking about it now. A professor of planetary sciences and advocate of manned space exploration here in the Solar System, Crawford takes on the necessary task of acquainting a larger audience with something Robert Forward put forth as a maxim: 'Starflight is difficult and expensive, but not impossible.' Following decades of work on beamed sail technologies, antimatter and space tethers, Forward wrote that line in 1996, but it summed up statements he had been making for decades. Gregory Matloff and Eugene Mallove would echo him in their Starflight Handbook (Wiley, 1989), with an emphasis on the 'difficult' aspect of the journey: "Starflight is not just very hard, it is very, very, very hard!" So I guess we could say starflight is hard3. Matloff,...