Caleb Scharf

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    Life on Earth Is a Sketchy Guide to an Alien Civilization

    Any assumptions about properties like intelligence or agency that we make based on what we currently know about life on Earth are on exceedingly shaky ground.Photograph by European Southern Observatory (ESO) / Wikicommons You might imagine that in the midst of a global pandemic and all of its social and economic fallout that our minds […]

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    The Selfish Dataome

    Does the data we produce serve us, or vice versa?

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    My Personal Hero: Caleb Scharf on Michael Storrie-Lombardi

    Being a scientist can be like willingly entering into a Roman gladiatorial contest. The hours are long, there’s a rank smell of indentured servitude, and at any minute your colleagues may attempt to eviscerate you for the pleasure of the crowds.A lot of the time we can look beyond these challenges because we have an […]

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    Is Physical Law an Alien Intelligence?

    Alien life could be so advanced it becomes indistinguishable from physics.

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    Life Beyond the Pale Blue Dot

    Our own oasis of life in the cosmos is blue, but will others be?

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    Don’t Write Off ET Quite Yet

    It’s true that we haven’t seen alien life, but neither have we seen much of the universe.

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    Can You Ever Really Know an Extraterrestrial?

    Knowledge about aliens might be as dangerous as the aliens themselves.

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    How the Cold War Created Astrobiology

    Life, death, and Sputnik.

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    Goodbye Copernicus, Hello Universe

    Our insignificance, and significance, on a cosmic scale