How Pluto got its moon and Contact, Inc.

Welcome! "Alien Life" tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. Here's today's news:
g Stars – Pluto might have been hit long ago by a virtual twin in a collision that created the ninth planet's moon Charon, according to a new computer simulation. The scenario is similar to the leading theory for the creation of Earth's Moon, another cosmic crack-up that involved a Mars-sized object slamming into our own planet. See article.
g Abodes – Carbon dioxide and oxygen — not methane — were prevalent in the Earth's atmosphere more than 1.8 billion years ago, according to scientists at the Penn State Astrobiology Research Center. See article. Note: This article is from 2003 (Geochemistry just doesn’t generate the daily news output of the space sciences!).
g Life – A team of researchers has solved the riddle of one of the plant kingdom's fastest and most ferocious movements: the blink-of-an-eye closing of the Venus flytrap. See article.
g Intelligence – When an informant tells you that six people he knows are planning on detonating a dirty bomb in Boston, should you believe him? That is no hypothetical question — which is why psychologists who study lie detection are getting more calls from the government than they used to. See article.
g Message – What if we examined how to communicate with extraterrestrials from a telecommunication engineer’s point of view? That’s the approach of Brian McConnell’s book, “Beyond Contact: A Guide to SETI and Communicating with Alien Civilizations.” Though the book has been out a few years now, it’s still worth a read if you haven’t already delved into it. For more about the book and an interview with McConnell, see article.
g Cosmicus – NASA has chosen four teams to develop a suite of advanced technologies slated for space flight validation on the New Millennium Programs Space Technology 8 Mission. See article. In addition, NASA has chosen to fund a new spacecraft, called the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, to study the edge of the Solar System, where the solar wind from the Sun interacts with interstellar particles. IBEX will launch in 2008, and take a highly elliptical orbit that keeps it away from the influence of the Earth's magnetosphere. It's equipped with two neutral atom imagers designed to spot interstellar particles as they interact with the outgoing solar wind. IBEX will also study galactic cosmic rays that pose a radiation risk to space explorers. See article.
g Learning – Here’s something the kids will like (Heck, us adults will like it, too!): Take a simulated journey from deep space into micro space with a powers of ten demo.
g Imagining – A complaint lodged again and again against science fiction aliens is that they look too much like us. Is that complaint valid? Is it so unlikely that extraterrestrials would look at least similar (though not identical) to humans? If so, then what would beings, intelligent or not so intelligent, who evolved on another world look like? That's what Cliff Pickover explores in The Science of Aliens. Though the book is a few years old, it’s still worth reading. Here’s a review of it and an interview with the author.
g Aftermath – Here’s a hidden gem about alien contact: the science fiction story “Contact, Incorporated,” about a private company that Earth’s government hires to make first contact with extraterrestrials. It’s from 1950 and appears in the seminal classic, “The Classic Book of Science Fiction,” edited by Groff Conklin (your library ought to have this volume). Despite being more than a half-century old, it remains an intriguing examination of how to communicate with aliens.

Get your SF book manuscript edited