Advanced alien civilizations could be communicating 'like fireflies' in plain sight, researchers suggest

Advanced alien civilizations may communicate via a series of flashing lights, similar to how fireflies do, a new paper hints. This would potentially make extraterrestrials much harder to spot if we continue to rely on our current observation techniques, the researchers argue.

However, while this thought experiment raises interesting questions about alien intelligence, it does not provide any evidence that these signals actually exist.

On Earth, fireflies communicate via a series of regularly repeating flashes caused by internal chemical reactions. These flashes are mainly used to find mates. But while these signals are simple, they do allow distinct firefly species to tell each other apart.

The researchers argue that similar flashing could be used as "here we are" signals by an alien civilization. And space is plentiful with repetitive bursts of light.

In the new paper, researchers analyzed the flashes of more than 150 pulsars — rapidly spinning, highly magnetized neutron stars that shoot out regular beams of electromagnetic radiation — as a proxy for what these signals may look like. And while they found no evidence of any artificial signals, they did note some similarities between the pulsars and firefly signals, and proposed ways of being able to detect future firefly-like flashes from other natural objects, like pulsars.

The study team argues that these signals could be more likely to evolve in long-lasting alien civilizations that progress past the need for widespread use of radio waves. A similar progression is already happening on Earth, where the use of communications satellites with more specific and concentrated radio signals is making our planet appear more "radio quiet" from afar, the researchers wrote.

And just because we may not naturally think to communicate in this way, it doesn't mean that other civilizations wouldn't, they added.

This is just one example of what non-human signals may look like, and the researchers encourage others to think outside of the anthropocentric box to come up with other ways that a non-human-like civilization could communicate.

https://www.livescience.com/space/extrat...rs-suggest

(January 7, 2026 at 5:35 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: Advanced alien civilizations could be communicating 'like fireflies' in plain sight, researchers suggest

Advanced alien civilizations may communicate via a series of flashing lights, similar to how fireflies do, a new paper hints. This would potentially make extraterrestrials much harder to spot if we continue to rely on our current observation techniques, the researchers argue.

However, while this thought experiment raises interesting questions about alien intelligence, it does not provide any evidence that these signals actually exist.

On Earth, fireflies communicate via a series of regularly repeating flashes caused by internal chemical reactions. These flashes are mainly used to find mates. But while these signals are simple, they do allow distinct firefly species to tell each other apart.

The researchers argue that similar flashing could be used as "here we are" signals by an alien civilization. And space is plentiful with repetitive bursts of light.

In the new paper, researchers analyzed the flashes of more than 150 pulsars — rapidly spinning, highly magnetized neutron stars that shoot out regular beams of electromagnetic radiation — as a proxy for what these signals may look like. And while they found no evidence of any artificial signals, they did note some similarities between the pulsars and firefly signals, and proposed ways of being able to detect future firefly-like flashes from other natural objects, like pulsars.

The study team argues that these signals could be more likely to evolve in long-lasting alien civilizations that progress past the need for widespread use of radio waves. A similar progression is already happening on Earth, where the use of communications satellites with more specific and concentrated radio signals is making our planet appear more "radio quiet" from afar, the researchers wrote.

And just because we may not naturally think to communicate in this way, it doesn't mean that other civilizations wouldn't, they added.

This is just one example of what non-human signals may look like, and the researchers encourage others to think outside of the anthropocentric box to come up with other ways that a non-human-like civilization could communicate.

https://www.livescience.com/space/extrat...rs-suggest

Ye gods that's dreadful. That isn't science. That's a sensationalized pop-sci article based on something uploaded to arXiv.

(January 7, 2026 at 5:35 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: And just because we may not naturally think to communicate in this way, it doesn't mean that other civilizations wouldn't, they added.

I am of the strong opinion that no actual intelligent civilisation would initiate random contact, unless they are absolutely suicidal, and yes, we humans are a suicidal species

Let's clone Leonardo!

Quote:Scholars on a quixotic quest to identify Leonardo da Vinci’s DNA achieve a milestone

Gonzalez-Juarbe’s swabs may have captured a biological clue. In a remarkable milestone in a decadelong odyssey, he and other members of the Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project (LDVP), a global scientific collective, report in a paper posted today on bioRxiv that they have recovered DNA from Holy Child and other objects—and some may be from Leonardo himself.

The preprint concludes that Y chromosome sequences from the artwork and from a letter penned by a cousin of Leonardo both belong to a genetic grouping of people who share a common ancestor in Tuscany, where Leonardo was born. The data suggest the DNA on the artwork could be Leonardo’s, but it’s far from proof, says geneticist Charles Lee, whose team at the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine analyzed samples from Holy Child. “Establishing unequivocal identity … is extremely complex,” agrees LDVP’s David Caramelli, an anthropologist and ancient DNA specialist at the University of Florence (UNIFI).

That’s because scientists can’t verify the sequences against any DNA samples known to have come from Leonardo himself. His burial site was disturbed early in the 19th century, and he had no direct descendants. Circumstantial evidence that the DNA fragments are Leonardo’s could come from other LDVP research: Y chromosome sampling of recently identified living descendants of his father, and efforts to extract DNA from tombs where his relatives are buried. But identifying Leonardo’s DNA is “about as hard a target there is” in ancient DNA research, says S. Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Temple University.

Identifying Leonardo’s DNA could not only help pin down the origin of disputed pieces such as Holy Child, but might point to biological traits underpinning his genius, although some scholars resist chalking up his abilities to his genes. “I tend to explain Leonardo more as the result of a favorable cultural and economic context,” says Leonardo expert Domenico Laurenza, an art historian at the University of Cagliari.

Yet some of what made Leonardo unique seems rooted in biology. His extraordinary ability to capture subtle shifts of light and motion, for example, has long hinted at exceptional visual acuity. LDVP aspires to one day find genetic variants that could account for it, says Gonzalez-Juarbe, who works at the University of Maryland. “Our hope is to open a door to explaining what was so unique about the smartest guy in history.”

https://www.science.org/content/article/...inci-s-dna

Gary Wenk Ph.D. :
Do Aliens from Other Planets Also Believe in Gods?

One day, probably far off in the very distant future, if astronomers are correct in their assumptions about the vastness of space, Earth will be visited by intelligent beings from another planet. We can’t predict what they will look like; however, I think that they will be able to tell us about their gods and their spiritual rituals.

My prediction is based on only two assumptions. First, our visitors from space can die; they are not immortal. Second, they care about each other. When one of their own dies, they mourn them, just as humans do. These assumptions, I think, will have led these aliens to invent gods and a belief in the afterlife. Belief in the afterlife, where we defeat death and are reunited with loved ones who have died, is the basis of all past and current religions. This desire is so pervasive and universal that humans have imagined being reborn into an afterlife in many, many places, such as Heaven, the Fields of Elysium, Tartarus, the Isles of the Blessed, Valhalla, Fólkvangr, Kibu, Pulotu, Duat, Diyu, Yomi, and more. It’s a very long list

Anthropologists estimate that at least 12,000 different gods, goddesses, and various animals or objects have been worshipped by humans since our species first appeared in the archeological record. At least 2000 different religions are practiced by humans today. The evolution of humans has clearly selected a brain that can accept an illogical world of supernatural causes and beings. Why not assume that the same thing once happened to our alien friends? Spirituality must offer something tangible that enhances procreation and survival. Otherwise, evolution should have selected against such costly beliefs and behaviors as making gigantic pyramids to house the dead, blowing oneself up for the pleasures of paradise, or sacrificing one's children as a measure of devotion to one’s deity.

Religious beliefs, spirituality, and the need to worship a deity of some kind are undoubtedly durable traits. Some gods were worshipped for very long periods and then virtually disappeared from the historical record. For example, the sun god Ra was worshipped by many different cultures for thousands of years and then completely disappeared. If historical precedent holds, many of the gods worshipped today will be forgotten and quickly replaced by others.

However, given the advanced level of technology required for intergalactic space travel, it is likely that this highly evolved and intelligent alien visitor would have already discarded their own ancient mythologies. Numerous studies of humans have consistently shown a robust negative association between religiosity and intelligence. We now see the consequences of a more educated world, as evidenced by a reduction, across countries and cultures, in public participation in religious services; a decrease in the personal importance of religion; and a decline in formal religious affiliation.

By the time aliens finally land on Earth, it is likely that both humans and aliens will be able to share stories about their respective long-past civilizations that once believed in supernatural beings.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...n-gods/amp

The question is whether an advanced species will view religion as theology or an exercise in history and anthropology.

New fear unlocked: Runaway black holes

Last year, astronomers were fascinated by a runaway asteroid passing through our solar system from somewhere far beyond. It was moving at around 68 kilometers per second, just over double Earth's speed around the sun.

Imagine if it had been something much bigger and faster: a black hole traveling at more like 3,000km per second. We wouldn't see it coming until its intense gravitational forces started knocking around the orbits of the outer planets.

This may sound a bit ridiculous—but in the past year, several lines of evidence have come together to show such a visitor is not impossible. Astronomers have seen clear signs of runaway supermassive black holes tearing through other galaxies, and have uncovered evidence that smaller, undetectable runaways are probably out there too.

It is difficult to search for relatively small runaway black holes. But a runaway black hole of a million or billion solar masses will create huge disruptions to the stars and gas around it as it travels through a galaxy.

They are predicted to leave contrails of stars in their wake, forming from interstellar gas in the same way contrails of cloud form in the wake of a jet plane. Stars form from collapsing gas and dust attracted to the passing black hole. It's a process that would last for tens of millions of years as the runaway black hole crosses a galaxy.

So runaway black holes tearing through and between galaxies are a new ingredient of our remarkable universe. It's not impossible that one could turn up in our solar system, with potentially catastrophic results.

We should not lose sleep over this discovery. The odds are minuscule. It is just another way that the story of our universe has become a little bit richer and a bit more exciting than it was before.

https://phys.org/news/2026-01-runaway-black-holes.html

Even if it happened we could do nothing about it so why worry?

If it ever happened, we'd see it coming millions of years in advance courtesy of that unsubtle "contrail of stars". Black holes don't sneak worth a damn. When they say "not impossible" they mean "not completely ruled out by theory or statistics, but impossible nonetheless, because we'd have noticed it." This isn't science, it's speculative disaster porn.

Considering that humans are going back to the moon, here are some exciting missions that await them.

Quote:Apollo astronauts left their poop on the moon. We gotta go back for that shit.

The bigger human footprint on the moon is, arguably, the 96 bags of human waste left behind by the six Apollo missions that landed there.

The bags have lingered there, and no one knows what has become of them. Now scientists want to go back, and answer a question that has profound implications for our future explorations of Mars: Is anything alive in them?

With the Apollo 11 moon landing, we took microbial life on Earth to the most extreme environment it has ever been in. Which means the human feces — along with bags of urine, food waste, vomit, and other waste in the bags, which also might contain microbial life — on the moon represents a natural, though unintended, experiment.

The question the experiment will answer: How resilient is life in the face of the brutal environment of the moon? And for that matter, if microbes can survive on the moon, can they survive interstellar travel, making them capable of seeding life across the universe, including on places like Mars?

Those jett bags “are the most protected of anything that would have high levels of fungi, [bacteria], and viruses from Earth,” Schuerger says. (Fungi are another form of microbial life that could possibly have survived.) For astrobiologists, that means those bags are the most interesting objects on the moon.

That said, the chances that anything survived in any of those jett bags are slim, Schuerger says. He and his colleagues recently completed an analysis modeling the likelihood that any microbes from Earth are still alive on any of the surfaces of the spacecraft that were left behind on the moon. The jett bags might be better protected (more on that in a bit), but the same harsh conditions apply.

In all the ways Earth is so hospitable to life, the moon is not. It does not have a protective magnetic field to deflect the most powerful and damaging cosmic radiation. It does not have an ozone layer to absorb the sun’s ultraviolet rays.

The vacuum of the moon is inhospitable to life. And without an atmosphere, the moon is subjected to wild temperature swings over day and night: It can be minus 173 degrees Celsius (minus 279.4 degrees Fahrenheit) at night, and 100°C (212°F, or the boiling point of water on our surface) during the day.

There’s a good chance that a combination of radiation and extreme temperature has killed the microbes in the jett bags. Schuerger says there’s a “low probability” that anything survived in them. “But it’s the highest probability of anything that landed on the moon.”

The surface conditions are harsh, but don’t lose hope: “Microbes don’t need to have a lot of protection,” Margaret Race, a biologist at the SETI Institute, says.

A lot would have to go right for the microbes to still be alive — or at least revivable. Bacteria can’t replicate (i.e., grow) without moisture. The human waste would have to have been packaged really well, for one, so their environment could remain moist. “In the [moist] environment of a closed diaper, presumably you should be able to have replication,” says Mark Lupisella, a NASA scientist who is doing some preliminary work on a potential mission to retrieve the jett bags and study them.

The jett bags would have to still be intact, which is not a given considering the wild temperature swings on the moon; they could be ripped open by the mechanical forces involved with heating and cooling.

“Also, we don’t know what the internal temperature of the bag is going to reach when it’s exposed to the sun,” Schuerger says. If it tops 100°C, he says, bacteria would likely only survive a few days, or weeks, on the moon.

Lupisella says even if all the life in the jett bags is dead, the bags are still worth studying. Scientists could possibly figure out how long the microbes lived on the moon and whether they evolved or adapted to the environment at all. “It’s a stretch, but it is possible we could discern whether or not these life forms might have mutated early on,” he says.

He’s saying there’s a tiny chance that natural selection might have kicked in inside those jett bags, leading to the microorganisms evolving to survive. If there were just a few microorganisms in the poop with the ability to survive the moon, they could have grown and spread.

Again, this is the most extreme place we’ve ever left life — possibly the most extreme place life has ever been. We need to see how resilient (or not) it is in that environment.

There’s also the possibility that some microbes might be revivable. That is, after decades of dormancy on the moon, some of these microbes might be able to be coaxed back to life under the right conditions. Bacterial spores (dormant bacteria that form a protective outer coating) in the Arctic have been revived after thousands of years frozen in ice. It would be fascinating if spores in fecal matter could be revived after decades on the moon.

If microbes can survive for a given period on the moon, they’re even more likely to survive on Mars, which has a thin atmosphere, a more hospitable environment, and evidence of flowing water.

One of scientists’ top questions about Mars is, “Is there, or has there ever been, life here?” The prevailing wisdom is that if life exists there, it probably looks a lot like bacteria, or some other type of very simple single-celled organism.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2...rs-science