The search for extra-terrestrial life

In his paper "Transit Lightcurve Signatures of Artificial Objects" (Journal of Astrophysics) Luc Arnold proposes that aliens would not bother blasting enormous amounts of radiation into space in the hope of contacting someone (as SETI hope), but rather they would occlude a suitable star with enormous orbiting objects. A suitable arrangement of "dots-and-dashes" could spell out some signature of intelligence: a handful of prime numbers, or the first few digits of PI perhaps.

To me this seems so much more plausible. The civilization would only need to dedicate a finite amount of time and effort to establishing one or more of these "follies". The signaling structures would live on long after the aliens have either gone or changed their minds. If it were technically possible for us to do it here, I would vote for it.

I would like to say that the Journal of Astrophysics is on my usual reading list, but I was alerted to this revolution in the search for ETI by that refuge of TI, the New Scientist.

Seinfeld Series 4

The 4^th series will be available on the 13^th of June, so make a date with arguably the best series of all. Episodes include The Bubble Boy (my personal favourite), and The Contest (which led to the series winning two Emmys).

Why not get Series 1-3 while you have your credit card out?

 

Google adds the UK to the online map service

A Beta version of Google Maps is now available for the UK. Here is my office.

Glasses free 3D

$3000 buys you the SynthaGram 204 - a glasses-free 3D monitor. This is brought to you by the StereoGraphics Corporation, who also make the better-known CrystalEyes 3D glasses system.

At that price, it can't be long before these things start to really take hold. 3D TV anyone?

Embarrasing SP2 problem

I am not one for Microsoft bashing, and I am always suspicious of the majority of anti-Microsoft propaganda. I think their products are great, and if it was so easy to improve on what they do then they would have legitimate competition; no amount of anti-competitive practice could stop that from happening.

However, this howler demands recognition. Subscribers to MSDN universal can download any of the Microsoft packages from their website using their custom download plug-in (the File Transfer Manager). Unfortunately the plug-in is not SP2 compatible:

Performing Downloads with Windows XP Service Pack 2

There is currently a known issue when installing File Transfer Manager for the first time on Windows XP machines that have Service Pack 2 installed. This is an issue that we are working to fix; in the meantime there is a workaround that will install the File Transfer Manager on Windows XP with Service Pack 2. Use these instructions if you get an error stating 'There was an error launching the file transfer manager. Please try again later or contact your help provider' when trying to download. This workaround will only need to be done once, after that FTM will load normally.

Update: That didn't even work! There is hope here. Follow all the instructions carefully and it should work.

Robo-head

Cool post on Boing-Boing. The movie (17MB!) requires Quicktime.

Coming to a reception near you soon!