Ajoint investigation between scientists from the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute and METI International resulted in the discovery of exactly zero radio transmissions emanating from KIC 8462852, aka Tabby’s Star, aka that “alien megastructures” star everyone freaked out about late last year. According to new findings published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, we still haven’t found signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. Our cold streak continues.

In case you don’t remember, there was a big hooplah last fall when Jason Wright, an astronomer at Penn State University, dropped a small suggestion that strange stellar light patterns glowing from Tabby’s Star, nearly 1,500 light-years away from Earth, were caused by “alien megastructures,” a catchall phrase for materials artificially placed in orbit. Since then, study after study has basically put that hypothesis to rest, with more reasonable ideas like a family of weird cometsgarnering more and more support based on new data.

But science is about making confirmations, so the dutiful scientists at the SETI Institute and METI international came together and used the Boquete Optical SETI Observatory in Panama to determine whether or not the strange dimming patterns were caused by intelligent extraterrestrials, as well as use the Allen Telescope Array in California to measure whether the star system was spewing out any radio signals indicative of advanced technology.

“We were looking to see if there are intentional laser signals being beamed at us,” says METI International research and study coauthor Douglas Vakoch. He tells Inverse he and his colleagues were looking for the kinds of signs of technology that us humans on Earth might be capable of building and using to broadcast our presence to the rest of the universe.

Unfortunately, they did not find any radio signals, and the optical signals found were less than encouraging. No optical signal of a particular period pattern was measured, and the power of the light pulsing from Tabby’s Star didn’t seem characteristic of a laser signal. “If there is a large laser facility kicking out signals of 5 mega-joules or stronger, we would have been able to detect those,” says Vakoch. “We didn’t.”

Vakoch emphasizes that the results don’t totally discount alien life living in the star system. He and his team were using Boquete during Panama’s rainy season — “the worst possible time,” he says. He acknowledges that the results “don’t say for sure there aren’t extraterrestrials out there.” It’s always possible E.T. is sending weaker signals out or exhibiting patterns stretching across a larger timeframe.

“But we can say that within the scenario where we could have possibly gotten a signal, we didn’t get one,” says Vakoch.

Disheartening, sure, but there’s a strong silver lining to the new findings. While SETI research around the world centers in large part around the measure of radio signals, the new investigation allowed the scientists to flex their optics muscles and get practice at looking for signs of E.T. across other frequencies as well. “If we get a signal, there may be different sources of information at different frequencies, so we need to be ready to jump on that,” said Vakoch.

Moreover, the study demonstrated the feasibility of using even a modest-sized optical telescope to conduct SETI observations. This runs counter to the whole “bigger is better” mentality that permeates space science, and Vakoch thinks the new methodological approaches he and his colleagues outline in their paper illustrate a new model for doing SETI research that is more efficient and sustainable. He says a major goal of METI International, after all, is to answer “how do we sustain the search going forward” as funding for these types of projects drop or become thinned out over more and more initiatives.

“We still don’t have a natural explanation for what is going on” with Tabby’s Star, says Vakoch. And he doesn’t find that particularly discouraging. “This is the type of ambiguity we can expect if we really got a signal from E.T. It will be a slow unfolding and grappling of the data. So we continue to search for answers.”

Protoplanetary disks are celestial bodies found around young stars, which will eventually be sculpted into round spherical as we know them. They’re the subjects of the European Southern Observatory’s Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument, which has been somewhat forcibly maneuvered into the acronym SPHERE. On Wednesday, the ESO released new images and data, captured by three teams of astronomers using SPHERE, of what those young solar systems look like in action.

SPHERE’s cutting-edge precision is able to deliver the kind of detail we need in order to better understand the evolutionary processes of these nascent stars and planets. It has adaptive optics that compensate for visual distortion and a coronagraph that keeps the light from the central star from blowing out the rest of the image. It can also isolate light coming from the star and separate it from the features forming in the disk to make for a more accurate reading.

SPHERE’s first observation, or “first light,” was in June 2014. It uses direct imaging— basically, taking highly detailed pictures of the exoplanets scientists have their eye on. Getting usable direct imaging data from protoplanetary disks is no small feat (though it’s not easy to capture regular planets either).

Concentric rings on the disk around the star RX J1615.

Protoplanetary disks aren’t actually solid — the term refers to expansive clouds of stellar gas and dust that compact into planets over time. But the specifics of that process, including how some planets end up with rings or arms, still aren’t known to us. A SPHERE team hailing from the Netherlands obtained images of rings already forming in an especially young disk — a rare and valuable set of data. Observation of a second symmetrical system soon followed, which is important because prior to this we were mostly finding disks with asymmetrical features — this might mean there are more of the former out there than we thought.

Arm-like spiral structures on the disk around star HD 135344B.

The teams also observed cool phenomena like a “large central cavity and two prominent spiral arm-like structures,” which should eventually develop into something resembling Jupiter. They were also lucky enough to capture images of four separate dark streaks — shadows of young planetary material — one of which changed in shape between observations, meaning SPHERE is getting the data of it dynamically evolving in real time. The takeaway from all of this is basically that protoplanetary spheres are full of surprises — tantalizing, immensely rich fields of study that we now have the technology to better explore.

Photos via European Southern Observatory, J. de Boer et al., European Southern Observatory, T. Stolker et al., European Space Organization

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Every building starts with a strong foundation — pouring concrete into a hole, constructing on top of it. But according to Martyn Dade-Robertson, the buildings on Mars won’t follow that formula, instead relying on colonies of genetically-engineered bacteria to be our de facto architects.

Dade-Robertson — professor of architectural design at Newcastle University — might seem crazy, but he’s onto something: Humans have always been playing catch-up to the construction genius of microbes. The plaque on your teeth is a structure built by bacteria, and we all know how sturdy and resistant it is against intruders. The planet’s youngest fossils are structures built by microbial colonies, called stromatolites. Even our most modern construction techniques rely on the labor of much simpler organisms: Cement is derived from calcium carbonate produced by living things like corals and mollusks — without them, we’d have no concrete, no cities. “Civilization is literally built on the fossils of sea creatures,” writes Dade-Robertson and colleagues in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.

So why not cut out the middlemen? Could we inject bacteria directly into the soil, and have it consolidate the soil into a sort of concrete, in response to the pressure from the house sitting above? Maybe. “From our work we know that there are a number of genes (over 100) whose regulation is changed as they come under pressure,” Dade-Robertson tells Inverse by email. “These genes are controlled by genetic switches so we have been looking for genetic switches which can be turned on or off. We can then use these genetic switches to turn on other genes which, for example, would synthesize materials — inducing calcium carbonate formation, for example.”

Bacteria in the soil responds to pressure, and the foundation builds itself.

This isn’t science fiction. Already, a company called BioMason is making bricks cured by bacteria rather than heat. The process produces no carbon dioxide emissions — and the energy savings are enormous. Only the fossil fuel industry is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the construction industry, worldwide. Another group out of Newcastle University has engineered BacillaFilla— a strain of bacteria that can live in a dormant state in concrete, awakening in the presence of cracks to spur the structure to repair itself.

Here on Earth, these technologies could be game-changers. On Mars, they might be our only option.

Transporting construction materials to build colonies on Mars is inefficient, estimated to cost about $50,000 per pound, and lacking (to the best of our knowledge) the fossilized remains of sea creatures, the ingredients for cement won’t be naturally available.

But bacteria isn’t heavy, and under the right environmental conditions, they can be willing conspirators in the construction of a new world. Dade-Robertson admits his bioengineered foundations are still a ways away from reality here on Earth, let alone in extraterrestrial space. There are technical challenges to overcome: his test-case bacteria, E. coli, wouldn’t much like a soil environment, so that will have to be swapped out. Then there’s getting it to produce the right sort of material in the right quantity at the right pressure.

Of course, there will be political, legal, and ethical complications, too. “Do people want genetically engineered microorganisms in their environment?” he asks. “Will governments legislate for it? These are questions that are at the forefront of our mind.” It’s certainly illegal, at least for the time being, to seed Mars with alien life forms from Earth.

Maybe in 20 years we’ll see some working form of bioengineered foundations for Earth-bound homes, Dade-Robertson says. These wouldn’t just save energy, they could actually be carbon-negative, since the production of calcium carbonate sequesters carbon dioxide.

The amazing thing about imagining how we might build on Mars is how it expands our minds in terms of the possibilities here on Earth. In the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Dade-Robertson and his coauthors point out that the point is to consider the future in a greater scope: “Ultimately, considering the challenge of new types of material and construction techniques is not only of practical use to the future colonizers of Mars, but also encourages us to think in new ways about the colonization of our own planet.”

Photos via Martyn Dade-Robertson, NASA/Wikimedia

Here’s a scary thought: If the United States and Russia can’t agree on Ukrainian borders or even the pettiest aspects of cyber security, could the internationally community respond responsibly to an apocalyptic threat?

Though Ted Chiang’s short story “Story of Your Life” is mostly hyper-focused on the exchanges between human scientists and a group of aliens that suddenly descend upon the earth, its big screen adaptation, Arrival, paints a picture — or a mural — of diplomatic madness. In the film, massive alien ships with mysterious occupants land in a dozen countries, including the U.S., Russia, and China, creating an immediate need for human unity and, of course, a lot of narrative-driving tension.

“The loss of U.S. hegemony helped the dramatic narrative,” screenwriter Eric Heisserer told Inverse. “We weren’t the ones calling all the shots. The U.S. doesn’t get to be the leader, the number one domino.”

As expert linguist Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) and their team of military assistants try to establish a line of communication with the aliens, the State Department pressures its ambassadors for humanity to talk faster. Fear makes the issue of extraterrestrial motivation paramount. Military types want to know “why” the aliens have descended upon earth. Are they hostile? Do they want to trade? What are they saying to the Japanese (and can they trust the daily reports from other nations about their conversations with the aliens)?

“There were more scenes in the script; I sketched out conversations between other alien arrival sites, between the London team and one of the Russian teams,” Heisserer said. “I had the Indian Ocean site, which is in international waters, and I asked who is taking charge of that place (spoiler: nobody and everybody). It was a fascinating work of political gymnastics that at at the end of the day just made my head hurt.”

Director Denis Villeneuve’s film didn’t keep all of the scripted international conflicts, but the filmmaker did include looks at how other countries approached communication with the aliens.

“We landed on mahjong as a model of communication that would be an alternative to them learning Mandarin,” production designer Patrice Vermette said of the Chinese government’s attempt to bridge the infinite language gap. “Then we began to realize all the pitfalls and trips that came from using a game with rules and victory and defeat baked into every interaction, and realized how that could undermine all the communication you are trying to do.”

In the film, the Chinese have a more difficult time with the aliens because of this alternate mode of communication, which in turn puts pressure on the American team to decode the aliens’ intentions. The film endorses patience and attempts at empathy over confrontation, policies that become harder to maintain as time goes on — China and Russia in particular inch closer and closer to confrontation with the aliens, which could precipitate an apocalypse for humanity.

Heisserer tried to consider not only what would happen if aliens arrived, but what would happen over time if they stayed. “Every indicator externally suggested that, yes, the longer you had these crazy scary alien ships parked in your backyard and you, as a regular citizen, had no info, the easier it was to buy that you’d be freaked out,” he said. The character of Colonel Weber [Forest Whitaker], is stuck managing an impossible situation: hysterical government leaders and citizens looking for answers, and patient scientists and linguists who see this as the opportunity of a lifetime.

In the version of Arrival that made it to screen, citizens begin to riot and demand information, and, though the United States president goes unnamed in the film, it is clear that he or she has the fortitude to withstand that outcry. Given what we’ve seen in this tumultuous presidential election, with two candidates who promise very different approaches to major crises, it is only fitting that Arrival hits theaters this week.

“For a long time there was a scene in the script where Col. Weber had to deal with the growing crowd surrounding the site of normal citizens who have come to look,” he said. “The tone of that group is more and more violent, the way it is with a certain political candidate in this election. The scene is Col. Weber talking to a sergeant, and the sergeant says, ‘I need 200 more men with assault rifles patrolling the area,’ and Weber says how dangerous it was having 200 armed soldiers next to an alien spaceship. The sergeant says, ‘I’m less worried about what happens to our citizens than what happens to our visitors.’”

Photos via Paramount Pictures

Breakthrough Listen, the largest scientific alien-hunting research program in the world, has just begun using a powerful new telescope to monitor what’s far beyond Earth.

The team announced the very first observations from the Parkes Radio Telescope in New South Wales, Australia, which joins two other telescopes operated by Breakthrough Listen (one’s in California and the other’s in West Virginia)

This new, third telescope is an instrument uniquely positioned to help us pinpoint signs of extraterrestrial civilizations that might resemble our own. “First light” for the Parkes telescope was an observation of red dwarf Proxima Centauri, of recent Proxima b fame.

Shining brightly in this Hubble image is our closest stellar neighbour: Proxima Centauri.

“The chances of any particular planet hosting intelligent life-forms are probably minuscule,” Andrew Siemion, director of UC Berkeley SETI Research Center, told Breakthrough Initiatives. “But once we knew there was a planet right next door, we had to ask the question, and it was a fitting first observation for Parkes. To find a civilization just 4.2 light years away would change everything.”

The Parkes radio telescope

Searching for Life from Down Under

Parkes is the third such telescope to be used for Breakthrough Listen, and has the advantage of a Southern Hemisphere perspective that its peers, both located in the United States, do not. Now that Parkes has been added to the Breakthrough roster and is officially, functionally up and running, the search for alien life is only ramping up. In the southern sky, it will search the centers of 100 nearby galaxies and 1,000 stars, including all 43 within five parsecs. As with the other telescopes, all the data Parkes gathers will be available to the public for free.

Since theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and entrepreneur Yuri Milner launched the project in 2015 with a 10-year projection and a budget of $100 million, Breakthrough Listen has leapfrogged to the very front of the search for extraterrestrial life. It plans to survey the 1 million stars closest to Earth. The Breakthrough Initiatives also include Breakthrough Message, a mission to design communication that could be understood by alien species, and Breakthrough Starshot, which aims to get an unmanned flight to Alpha Centauri.

Photos via ESA/Hubble & NASA,  Australia Telescope National Facility, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization

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Black holes are mysterious cosmic monsters, shrouded in a thick veil of gas and dust. They lurk in the heart of galaxies, waiting to gobble up stars that get too close, before belching deadly x-rays in satisfaction. However, astronomers recently spotted a strange black hole streaking through space.

At first glance, this rogue specimen just seemed out of place, but upon further study, astronomers realized they had stumbled upon the remains of a grisly cosmic scene. Unlike most black holes, the subject in question — dubbed B3 1715+425 — was not in the center of a galaxy. Even more surprisingly, it appeared to be “naked”, meaning it was devoid of a black hole’s typical stellar shroud.

“We’ve not seen anything like this before,” James Condon, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and lead author of the study, said in a news release.

B3 1715+425 is a supermassive black hole residing on the fringes of an unusually small, faint galaxy. Like most supermassive black holes, it was doing its thing, munching on stars and spewing out deadly x-rays when it overindulged. That routine continued for billions of years until B3 1715+425’s host galaxy slammed into a larger galaxy.

This type of cosmic collision is commonplace, especially within larger galaxy clusters, like ZwCl 8193, where B3 1715+425’s galaxy lives. Astronomers think that the largest galaxies in the universe formed through galaxy mergers. Typically when galaxies merge, the two black holes within those galaxies take part in a dramatic orbital dance, with the pair orbiting each other until they eventually combine. (The LIGO experiment saw proof of this last September).

Most of the time, this merging process seems to go rather smoothly, as nearly all galaxies host a supermassive black hole, the majority of which are located at the galactic center. However, in the case of B3 1715+425, something went very wrong. B3 1715+425 was stripped of its stars as it tried to escape the clutches of a larger galaxy, and astronomers caught it in the act.

Using the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VBLA) — a network of ten 25-meter dish antennas spread across the globe and operated out of New Mexico — astronomers clocked the rogue behemoth racing away from the cosmic collision at more than 2,000 miles per second.

“We were looking for orbiting pairs of supermassive black holes, with one offset from the center of a galaxy, as telltale evidence of a previous galaxy merger,” Condon said. “Instead, we found this black hole fleeing from the larger galaxy and leaving a trail of debris behind it.”

As it streaks through space, B3 1715+425 is steadily hemorrhaging ionized gas — the fuel needed to form new stars. Once that gas supply is gone, the galaxy will become invisible, which astronomers expect to see in the next billion years.

Are there other black holes like B3 1715+425 out there? Condon and team think there are, and they will be scanning the cosmos with the VBLA to find them.

Photos via NRAO/AUI/NSF

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