Last Contact, by Stephen Baxter

“Another super-civilization discovered, off in space. We live in strange times, Mum.”

“That’s the fifteenth this year."

Full text here.

Mac Tonnies on space archaeology

Mac Tonnies has a new gig blogging about SETI. He's begun posting about lunar and martian archaeology. Cool!

Prelude to space archaeology, by Alice Gorman

The abstract for her WAC-6 paper:

The archaeology of space exploration has been defined as a separate field, based on a chronological period – 1936 until the present - and a set of places, sites and artefacts associated with the contemporary era of military and globalising technologies. In this paper I want to explore the theoretical terrain of space archaeology. It could be regarded as historical archaeology, dealing with capitalist-driven colonial expansion and cross-cultural encounters; the archaeology of the contemporary past, where memory meets technology; industrial archaeology; or as an area of cultural heritage management. Other possible frameworks include cosmopolitanism and the consideration of large-scale evolutionary trajectories of the human species. Each of these approaches suggests research questions and future directions for analysing the material culture of the space age, which will assume greater importance as more nations coopt the heritage of space to support their claims to celestial resources.

NSS Space Settlement Art Contest

One with a space heritage theme: Tranquility Base Memorial Center, by Bill Wright. Check out the rest of the entries.

The Recognition of Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Are Humans up to it?

A JBIS paper by Derek Pugsley.

SETI strategies tend to overlook the uncertain nature of intelligence. How can we search for intelligence when we do not really know what it is? This paper explores the nature of intelligence and tries to identify its essence. It questions the validity of the human model of intelligence that is used to measure intelligence in terrestrial animals and underpins SETI projects. It concludes that we may only be able to recognise intelligence in an extraterrestrial animal from its behaviour and proposes several patterns of behaviour that could be used.

Terraformed Exoplanets and SETI

A new paper by Martin Beech in the JBIS.

A brief review is made of the 6 presently known exoplanetary systems with parent stars having ages within 1 percent of their main sequence life time limit. The exoplanets discussed range in mass from 0.05 to 7.4 times that of Jupiter and they move along moderately circular orbits - although 2 have relatively high eccentricities of order 0.4. Three of the systems are known to allow stable orbits within their habitable zone. It is argued that should these, and similar such systems yet to be discovered, support advanced civilizations then their existence might be betrayed through the presence of terraformed (that is engineered) habitable planets situated outside of the canonical habitable region.

Nostalgia for Infinity: exploring the archaeology of the final frontier

• Alice Gorman (Flinders University of South Australia) Alice.Gorman (at) flinders.edu.au
• Beth O'Leary (New Mexico State University) boleary (at) nmsu.edu
  
  Outer space has been called the final frontier: after the Earths surface, the depths of the sea and the upper reaches of the atmosphere, it is the last environment that modern technology has enabled humans to explore. In the 21st century, humans stand physically upon the threshold of outer space; and yet it is a place that human cultures have always known. Since the Palaeolithic, the sun, moon and other celestial bodies have been included in the construction of cosmologies, creation stories and accounts of the moral and physical nature of the world.
  
  The conquest of space required astronomical and engineering technologies: rockets, launch pads, tracking stations, electronics, energy sources, and life-sustaining environments. The material culture of the space age is present both on earth and in space. It is curated in museums, located in historic facilities, in orbit around numerous celestial bodies in the solar system, and on lunar and planetary surfaces. Its impacts are evident in the communities sustained by space industry and in the ubiquitous domestic satellite dishes, indicating participation in an increasingly globalised economy.
  
  As space material culture begins to be accepted as heritage, the challenge for the archaeologist is to understand how people interact with the places and objects of space, not just as the province of a scientific elite, but as part of the fabric of every day life, permeating popular culture, politics and information exchange.
  
  We invite papers addressing any aspect of the diverse material culture of space, such as terrestrial, orbital and planetary space sites, collection policies and procedures, military and civil space programmes, space tourism, and cultural heritage management and preservation.