News from i4is The next meeting of the i4is SF Book Club is Thursday, November 20th at 1900 UK time (via Zoom), if you would like to join in send a request through to bookclub@i4is.org. The reading material this month will be 2 short stories from “The Road to Science Fiction Volume 4 – From […]
Blog
On a Second Moon and the Zond 1 Probe.
Adam Hibberd 2025 PN7, the widely touted newly discovered quasi-satellite of the Earth, has stirred-up in me a renewed fascination for identifying apparently natural objects as old derelict interplanetary missions. So is this object natural or technogenic? If I were to say 50:50 this could be the failed Russian Zond 1 probe to Venus, what […]
Members Newsletter – September
Origins of Life: The Possible and the ActualIn Origins of Life: The Possible and the Actual (https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202508.1593/v1) researchers from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona (Ricard Sole), Santa Fe Institute USA (Chris Kempes) and University of York, UK (Susan Stepney) consider questions of how life forms, whether life is an inevitable outcome, and how diverse its presentation […]
Principium 50
Principium 50 has gone out to subscribers and is now accessible to all.
Members Newsletter – August
News from i4isOur US colleagues, led by Robert Kennedy, are now working with partners on another NASA NIAC Phase 2 study on betavoltaics as in our 2023 paper, Swarming Proxima Centauri: Optical Communication Over Interstellar Distances (https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.07061). And members may have noticed some fuss around the third known interstellar object, 3I/Atlas, which has included much input from our […]
3I/ATLAS: How low should we go?
Adam Hibberd 3I/ATLAS, the interstellar object, is in the Solar System and making its presence known, not only to astronomers but also to the world’s media. My paper with Avi Loeb and Adam Crowl examined the hypothesis that 3I/ATLAS might be alien technology, go here. I confess this paper has been somewhat of a hit! […]
3I/ATLAS: An Interstellar Controversy
Adam Hibberd When you have a surprise, uninvited visitor gatecrash your party, you are liable to treat them cautiously at first and then after a visual appraisal reveals they are worthy of acceptance, maybe curiosity will strike and you may start asking questions to find out more about them. You may by the end of […]
3I/ATLAS: What would Juno need to do?
Adam Hibberd Having demonstrated yesterday that a reasonably low DeltaV (velocity increment) applied by the Juno’s engine could achieve a significantly closer approach to 3I/ATLAS than would otherwise be the case if Juno stayed in its current Jupiter orbit, surely that would be the end of the matter? The answer is ‘not quite’, since this […]