But isn't it interesting that our methods of observation and the political choices of how to allocate resources prefigure in advance the kinds of life that we're able to find and, consequently, how terms like "safe" and "detectable" come to be synonymous?
The microbe is a safe kind of other the encounter with which does not require us to reevaluate what it means to be human or to live in our galaxy. Is that why JWST is doing atmospheric spec and not IR searches? No, not entirely.
In short, TS threaten the supremacy of the human as a galactic intelligence. We are not special, we are not owed the stars in some manifest destiny, we are not nature's chosen. A microbe doesn't do that. If we wanted to, we could destroy k2-18b before intelligent life can evolve
Technosignatures, on the other hand, indicate dangerous life. Intelligent life, likely much more technologically developed than ourselves. This kind of life is dangerous in the Hollywood sense, but it is also dangerous in the affective, social sense.
Not all aliens are equal in detectability or in the consequence of their detection. Dimethyl sulfide is an indicator of simple, microbial life. An ingredient in the primordial soup. It might mean there's life, and that's groundbreaking, but it is a safe kind of life.
5. Not to make this about biosig v. technosig, but I do want to talk about why these observations are done on big government-funded telescopes-in other words, why atmospheric spectroscopy is being done, but not infrared observations looking for waste heat from alien tech?
Then there needs to be exhaustive experimentation here on Earth to understand if something like dimethyl sulfide is *really* something that can only be produced in known biotic processes. If it could occur naturally without life, then it is an ambiguous biosignature.
4. SO MUCH MORE RESEARCH is needed before anything can be said conclusively. Observations and analyses have to be repeated, probably with other telescopes (including some, like the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which haven't been built yet).
3. k2-18b is ~124 ly from Earth. JWST is powerful, but to do atmospheric spectroscopy at that distance is bananas. This suggests that the detected biosignatures are very prevalent in the exoplanetary atmosphere.
2. k2-18b is suspected to be a mostly watery planet, and one of the biosignatures that may have been detected here is dimethyl sulfide, which on Earth is emitted by oceanic phytoplankton. So, yeah.
1. Wow!! This really might be it, folks.
M. Gessen hits the nail on the head, yet again
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/o...
The "Transformations in Spirituality and Religion" section of this report from 2000 titled "When SETI Succeeds: The Impact of High-Information Contact" 🙃
I'm just a boy, standing in front of a physicist, begging him to reconsider the broad generalizations through which scientists tend to understand religion (which consequently makes scientists look naive and silly!)
Everyone wants there to be a grand scheme behind all of this but the terrible truth is that extremely stupid people are in charge and they have a fanatical devotion to wrong, childlike concepts of society and economics cooked up by right wing radio hosts in order to sell tainted dietary supplements
yes
my new theory is that once you have a certain amount of money and wealth you start to go crazy and detach from reality. that number is different for everyone. for me it's $20
thankfully, "Grok, welcome to the resistance" is the sequence of words that summons the meteor
portrait
CCSR is pleased to announce that Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social will be joining us this Fall as Postdoc in Religion & the Public Conversation. His work explores how scientists approach & apprehend the unknown; he will pursue a public-facing project on "Detection." ccsr.princeton.edu
Thank you, Maia! 🌈
Thank you!! 🥹🥰
Interrupting my regular lurking and retweeting bc I GOT A JOB!! This fall I'll be a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton's Center for Culture, Society, and Religion @princetonccsr.bsky.social working on the "Religion and the Public Conversation" project 😎
What we're hearing: The senior House Democrat told Axios that a colleague called them after a town hall crying and said: "They hate us. They hate us."
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Just gonna leave this right here
my kingdom for chinos that don't make me look like this
Yes. If DHS can barge in, say your visa was revoked, be told you have a green card, say it's revoked too, and then disappear you so that neither your lawyer nor your family can find you, then all the guardrails are gone. There is no policy, practice, or law protecting anyone.
They adopted a posture of total submission and it bought them precisely nothing. A lesson for the Trump era www.nytimes.com/live/2025/03...
