We Cannot Extend Our Lives Forward, but We Can Backwards

The alchemists of past centuries tried hard to make the elixir of life: ... Those efforts were in vain; it is not in our power to obtain the experiences and the views of the future by prolonging our lives forward in this direction. However, it is well possible in a certain sense to prolong our lives backwards by acquiring the experiences of those who existed before us and by learning to know their views as well as if we were their contemporaries. The means for doing this is also an elixir of ...

 Discovery of the First Pulsar

In 1967, British scientists found a much nearer intense radio source turning on and off with astonishing precision, its period constant to ten or more significant figures. What was it? Their first thought was that it was a message intended for us, or maybe an interstellar navigation and timing beacon for spacecraft that ply the space between the stars. They even gave it, among themselves at Cambridge University, the wry designation LGM-1 - LGM standing for Little Green Men. However, they wer...