The potential of Big Data is widely recognized and many are seeking fortunes with Big Data today, just as they once sought fortunes by heading West in America. While success was initially limited only by creativity and passion, over time we need civilization, with all its accompanying benefits and constraints. As the field of Big Data matures, it is approaching the end of the "Wild West" era. I...

Transyears in biology have been documented thus far by the extended cosinor approach, including linear-nonlinear rhythmometry. We here confirm the existence of transyears by simulated annealing, a method originally developed for a much broader use, but described and introduced herein for validating its application to time series. The method is illustrated both on an artificial test case with kn...

Understanding the syntax of an undeciphered writing is a significant challenge. This can provide important clues to the nature of writing and guide potential decipherments. Here we evaluate a set of computational tools that can help us address this problem. We show that significant aspects of the writing can be inferred through this approach without making any assumption about the underlying co...

In a prior study (Garrett, 2011), I introduced a simple economic growth model designed to be consistent with general thermodynamic laws. Unlike traditional economic models, civilization is viewed only as a well-mixed global whole with no distinction made between individual nations, economic sectors, labor, or capital investments. At the model core is a hypothesis that the global economy’s curre...

A model of the spatial emergence of an interstellar civilization into a uniform distribution of habitable systems is presented. The process of emigration is modelled as a three-dimensional probabilistic cellular automaton. An algorithm is presented which defines both the daughter colonies of the original seed vertex and all subsequent connected vertices, and the probability of a connection betw...

Advanced civilizations must radiate heat while utilizing planetary energy sources. This waste heat can be a thermodynamic marker of Earth-like civilization. Here we model such planetary radiation and propose a strategy for detecting an alien unintentional thermodynamic electromagnetic biomarker. We show that astronomically observable infrared civilization biomarkers can be detected within an in...