[NEWS] Five sci-tech links: ancient stars, Great Filter, Luxembourg, uploading, beacons for ET

[rfmcdonald]

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  Matt Williams at Universe Today notes that the discovery, by a team of astronomers based in the Canaries, of J0815+4729, an ancient metal-poor star in the Galactic Halo some 13.5 billion years old.


• Fraser Cain at Universe Today shares a video making the argument that finding extraterrestrial life would be bad for us, since it would suggest the Great Filter lies in our future.


• David Schrieberg at Forbes notes early signs that the decision of Luxembourg to market itself as a headquarters for the commercial space industry is paying off.


• Beth Elderkin at Gizmodo interviews a collection of experts to see if the possibility of uploading a human mind, as depicted in (among others) Altered Carbon, is possible. Most seem to think something is imaginable, actually.


• At Wired, Stephen Wolfram expands upon a blog post of his to consider what sort of archive, containing what sort of information, might be suitable as a beacon for future extraterrestrial civilizations after we are gone.