Comment Re:This is good... (Score 1) 374
What if the aliens are just waiting for us to go all digital before they deal with us?
What if the aliens are just waiting for us to go all digital before they deal with us?
The hunt for that Earth-like planet around Alpha Centauri B is now underway in Chile.
According to the NASA/JPL website Planet Quest:
At a little over four light years from Earth, the sunlike star Alpha Centauri B — actually a member of a three-star system — is our sun's closest neighbor and practically a stone's throw away in celestial terms.
[The] planet-hunting team is using a telescope in Chile to keep an eye on the star for the next three years, in order to collect enough data to determine whether or not the next Earthlike planet lies next door.
Such a planet would be too small to see, but its gravity will pull on its host star, making it rock back and forth in a way that the telescope can detect. With NASA funding, they're also working on simulations that may be able to predict how a solar system could have formed around our cosmic neighbor.
I wish them success. Other searches for a planet around the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, have so far yielded nothing — but the quest continues.
You can read the full Planet Quest article here.
There is an assumption of privacy at universities; however, the university I worked for was subject to the public's open records requests. When requested, our IT department had to hand over the email of any employee (maybe student?). I believe this is a federal law (in the US).
Expanding on that concern, I wonder if online services allow IT departments to perform what is necessary for open records requests, or would that be a violation of TOS?
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato