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Nerd alert! This week I used words like deuterium and magnetohydrodynamics. And I may have gone into more detail that necessary about why we didn’t have fusion power generators in the 1960s. A British company's plans for test-firing a fusion rocket engine got my attention last week. I'd planned on writing about it then, but a dental procedure and household matters got in the way. So I researched and made more notes over the weekend, and when my town's power came back online late Monday afternoon: the notes weren't there any more. That's something I may talk about, sometime next week. Anyway, I re-researched, got stuck and/or distracted a couple times — I'll talk about tralphium and mindsets in a bit — and ended up with this post. Which, as it turned out, included a bit about NASA's interest in UAPs and the serious search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Sunshine, Energy and Mass: Fusion Basics Thermonuclear Weapons, History and Ideas: Ver...

(From STR/AFP/Getty Images, via NPR, used w/o permission.) (China's FAST radio telescope, another eye on the universe since 2016.) Scientists in China's Guizhou province have been receiving radio signals from interstellar space since 2016. Three of these signals may have been from folks who aren't human, but use radio waves the way we do. Then again, maybe they weren't.... More at A Catholic Citizen in America . Narrow-band signals from interstellar space. Tesla, pulsars, the Wow! signal and Tabby’s Star. Still looking for alien civilizations.

Scientists have been discussing alien life for some time: where it could be, what it might be like, and how we could find it. Quite a few non-scientists have been talking about the same thing. Some have pretty good grip on what we've been learning since Aristotle got famous and Anaxagoras didn't. Others have contributed to supermarket tabloid covers. And made informed discussion of extraterrestrial intelligence harder. Or more interesting, depending on your viewpoint. I see it as a bit of both. More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

We've known about 55 Cancri e since 2004. It may have lakes and rivers of lava. But that's probably not what keeps its night side hot enough to melt copper. Ross 128 b, discovered this year, is a bit more massive than Earth, warm enough for liquid water, and too hot. It's not quite 'Earth 2.0,' but it may support life.... More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

I nearly missed an interesting development in SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Interesting, and as newsworthy as most Stephen Hawking stories, but probably not significant. Professor Hawking didn't start chatting with aliens over the Labor Day weekend. That would be major news. But an outfit he's connected with will be listening to FRB 121102. I think it's likely that they'll collect useful data, and that this isn't a prelude to 'first contact.' Other scientists say they've spotted several planets orbiting Tau Ceti. Two of them may be just inside that star's habitable zone. More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

TRAPPIST-1's planets may support life: or not. We don't know. Not yet. We're pretty sure that all seven are rocky worlds, like the Solar System's inner planets. Three are in the star's habitable zone. The inner two definitely do not have one sort of atmosphere that would make life as we know it impossible. Even if we don't find life there, we'll learn a great deal while looking. More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

Contacting extraterrestrial intelligence, meeting people whose ancestors developed on another world, has been a staple of pulp fiction for generations. Lately, it's become a matter for serious discussion. I'll be looking at an op-ed's take on how learning that we're not alone might affect folks with various religious beliefs. I'll also share what I expect: and what I don't.... More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

I'd love to be talking about unambiguously artificial signals picked up by the Allen Telescope Array , or reports of a ship from beyond the Solar System settling into orbit around our moon. But that hasn't happened, and probably won't. Not in my lifetime. Instead, I'll talk about why I don't "believe in" extraterrestrial life; and do not assume that we are alone in the universe. That puts me in the third of folks who aren't sure, and I'll get back to that. My 'Friday' posts are usually about more-or-less-current 'science news.' That won't happen this week. I've read a few interesting articles, and will be talking about them — after the Christmas-New Year's gymkhana is over. This week I'm using material that didn't quite fit into an earlier post. I'll also talk about the Great Moon Hoax, Nicola Tesla and Martians; and what I think about life in the universe. More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

KIC 8462852, Tabby's Star, has been in the news recently. Scientists are pretty sure that something very large orbits the star, but haven't worked out what it is. A few scientists, looking at the data, say that it's probably a really odd natural phenomenon: but that it might something built by folks who aren't human. SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is still a science in search of a subject. But quite a few scientists are taking it seriously, which is why Berkeley SETI Research Center added few stars to the Automated Planet Finder's observing queue.... ...What I say about SETI and science in general may take some explaining, if you're new to this blog. Basically, I think God is large and in charge; and that part of my job is appreciating God's work — not telling the Almighty how it should have been made...." More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

Scientists working with ESA's Gaia space observatory published the first part of a three-dimensional sky map this week. It'll be the most comprehensive all-sky survey done so far. Not unexpectedly, this year's 'ET calling' headlines gave way to something slightly more down-to-Earth. We may eventually pick up an artificial signal from the stars: but that burst of radio noise from the direction of HD 164695 was almost certainly due to a clerical error of sorts. It wasn't our first false alarm, and I doubt it will be the last. More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

We may be within a generation of sending probes on flyby missions to other stars, high-energy jets from several distant galaxies all point in the same direction, and we're learning more about hot super-earths. That sort of thing fascinates me, your experience may vary. Meanwhile, SETI researchers will be checking out red dwarfs: which may be more promising places to look for neighbors than we thought. More at A Catholic Citizen in America .