SlashNOT

Matthew writes: SETI has recently decided to permanently suspend the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Dr. Jill Cornel Tarter, director of SETI, has immediately and permanently suspended the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, providing only a brief statement and no clues as to what may have precipitated the decision.

“As of this day, further search activities for SETI have been suspended. We will continue to utilize the distributed cluster for a few days to complete some signal processing, and then subsequently automatically un-install the SETI@NO_SPAMHome software from all participating computers.”

“I’d like to thank all SETI@NO_SPAMHome participants for allowing us the use of their spare compute cycles. I’d also like to say that it was nice knowing all of you, and Good luck next Thursday.

Monte writes: SETI@NO_SPAMHome, the Berkeley project that searches for extra terrestrial intelligence by harnessing unused compute cycles on home computers, has announced a joint venture with Starbucks to harness unused brain power.

Howard Shultz, Chairman and Chief Global Strategist for Coffee at Starbucks explains: “We’ve genetically engineered a special strain of Coffee that allows us to tap into the 90% of human potential that is unused. Participants simply drink a Venti cup of our new ‘Andromeda Strain’ in the morning while staring at the specially programmed monitors in the coffee shop. What looks like random noise to everyone else is, in fact, sampled intergalactic noise picked up at the Aracebo Telescope on Puerto Rico.”

“During the day, without concentrating on it, their minds will find patterns in the noise if they exist. Then, they simply stop in again on the way home for another cup, and we analyze their idle chatter with friends to find these patterns.

For example, a person might say ‘Joanie, that dress is the cutest! All your base are belong to us! Where did you get it?’, which would alert our scientists to take a hard look at the sample data that was downloaded into this participant’s brain.

Matthew writes: Scientists have synthesized life from artificially created DNA. The life form, a hulking perambulatory humanoid, can readily be discerned from natural life forms by the bolts embedded on both sides of its neck, green skin color, and completely flat skull.

Utilizing a new process that allowed the life form to be created from scratch in a matter of mere days, the scientists have solved a major puzzle in the search for the origins of life: Where do really freaking scary monstrosities of science come from?

Captain Shenanigan writes: In a move that has suprised physicists and confounded engineers worldwide, the FCC has announced its plans to expand the wireless spectrum in order to extend the reach of broadband communications to rural and other connectivity-disadvantaged areas.

“While the current electromagnetic spectrum is large, and has been adequate for people’s communications needs up until now,” FCC Chairman Michael Powell said, it was originally specified and installed in 1909 and is increasingly showing its age.

When pressed for details about how the FCC would actually go about generating more spectrum, which the scientist Jorgen Hansensensen alleges is infinite although largely unusable (except for some choice bits in the neighborhood of light, radio, microwave, and toaster)the FCC Chairman grew vague.

“Wireless broadband is increasingly a reality in the marketplace,” he said, but I have heard reports that it has trouble getting through trees. What we need is a a stretched spectrum, one that is thinner and more flexible. And longer, able to reach all the way from the city out into the countryside.”

Mathew writes: Transcribed from the Office of the Prime Advocate: “Hear me fellow Humans, It is difficult to believe that it has been just 65 years since the Assimilation of Earth into the Great Martian Advocacy. The changes I’ve seen since my youth confirm the greatness of this union of the inhabited planets.

The progress we’ve made thanks to their technological gifts is amazing—why, every farm pod now has at least one transport vehicle, and we can now speak to any farm pod in the world directly by voice telephone. The social equality we’ve achieved since the dismantling of our own fruitless economic bumbling is unparalleled when compared to the time when we ruled ourselves. And the opportunity that our selfless cadre of Grade A choice humans have to pay back our debt by committing themselves to the sustenance of our dear Martian friends seems so much less wasteful than the pointless loss of life in wars between the old nations.”

Matthew writes: Apache Point Observatory, in New Mexico, has recently announced that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has offered a 50 million dollar grant to the observatory to develop image processing software that will allow astronomers to combine images from multiple telescopes to achieve resolution higher than any one telescope could achieve.

“This grant is really a breakthrough for us, and the conditions for granting it were quite liberal”, said a spokesman for New Mexico State University. “Although the new name is a mouthful, we are excited to rename the facility to Internet Information Server Point Observatory.”

Matthew writes: Scientists have just announced that the Universe is probably not infinite, and that they’ve determined its shape. For a long time, Theorists considered that the Universe might be shaped like a Bagel, but they’ve now determined that the Universe is shaped like a Soccer Ball.

“It came to me while I was watching my daughter’s soccer game last week. So I ran back to the lab, ran the numbers, and viola! I was right.” Says Dr. Jeffrey Weeks.

“This caps of years of theoretical research. I thought we really had it when we were testing the Coffee Cup shaped universe; it was a big let down when the data from the microwave survey just didn’t support it. We’d been through so many different topologies by that point, including the Toothbrush shaped universe, the potato shaped universe, and the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: Skeletor action figure shaped universe.”

Andy Karn writes: The Morphological Adjustment Division, an obscure subcommittee of the American Physical Society, announced today that the universe took a quantum “wrong turn” over 5 decades ago. The scientific sleuths have traced the incorrect quantum state to a branching error in Hoboken NJ in 1951.

According to the so-called Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, every time a quantum measurement is made, the universe splits into a sub-universe for each possibility. The problem came when 8-year old Bobby Schwartz consumed a snack cake which was so improbably fresh it violated causality and sent our universe careening onto the wrong quantum path, according to M.A.D. scientist Floyd Koppernik.

Recent research into Bozon particle overabundance reveals that the unverse we were supposed to get “sucked much less” than the one we’re in, Koppernik said. The correct universe apparently has safe nuclear power which is too cheap to meter, jet packs, and rocket cars.

Committee members said it was too early to say whether we can get back to the right universe, but are exploring the idea of employing a card shuffling machine with a deck that consists entirely of the ace of spades.

Matthew writes: Using results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellite, which has mapped the universal background microwave radiation going back to the Big Bang, scientists have discovered that we know next to nothing about everything.

But they have put a precise figure to how much we don’t know: We now know that we don’t know what 95.6% of the Universe is made of.

On the good side, we also know that the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, and that it will expand indefinitely until it reaches a state of complete entropy.

Given that we have apparently no interaction with the unknown 95.6% of the Universe, scientists have decided to give up on Astrophysics and turn the awesome power of the WMAP Satellite to determine the answers to pressing questions on Earth, such as the exact age of Zsa Zsa Gabor, the extent to which Marlon Brando will expand, and the exact material composition of Michael Jackson’s face.

Matthew writes: SlashNOT employees observed a day of morning Sunday after the Columbia explosion, and they invited each other to share their thoughts about it today.

“When I woke up to the news, I knew right then that I would be in morning all day long. You know, stay in bed in a depressed semiconscious state, eat nothing but untoasted frozen waffles, unplug the alarm clock, and ignore the phone/spouse/kids/parents. I could give myself up to morning for a few days, but thankfully I’ve got my family and satire website to keep me going, and we do have to get back into space as soon as possible. That’s not going to happen with me lying around in a fugue.”—Matthew

“I don’t actually get up before noon anyway, so I heard the news rather late. But right then, I knew it would be morning all day long for me as well. We didn’t even have to discuss it—we both did the morning thing all day independently of each other.”—Michael.