Most powerful explosion ever, a complex schnoz and the Caretaker

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 – Astronomers have found the most powerful eruption in the universe. Lasting for more than 100 million years, the eruption has generated energy equivalent to hundreds of millions of gamma-ray bursts. See article.
g Abodes – What first appeared to be effervescent bubbles, like those in champagne, rising from a hydrothermal vent area in the northern Mariana Arc of the Pacific Ocean turned out to be liquid carbon dioxide. This is only the second location where the phenomenon has been identified. Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its partner institutions made the discovery during an April expedition. See article.
g Life – One of the great unknowns in the climate change debate is the effect of regional alterations on individual species. Connie Millar, a geneticist from the Pacific Southwest Research Station, discusses the importance of allowing a species to move, even as space becomes more precious and fenced off. See article.
g Intelligence – Your nose may not be as big as a jumbo jet (or maybe it is) but it is more complex in one sense: A new study of how air flows through your schnoz reveals the process to be more complicated than air coursing over a jet's wing. See article.
g Learning – There’s a new book out, “The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way”, by Joy Hakim, that is the first in a six-volume series aimed at getting young adults interested in science.
g Imagining – Could Star Trek’s Caretaker of The Original Series’ “Shore Leave” fame actually evolve? Unfortunately, we know almost nothing about his race with the exception that it is very advanced technologically and quite disciplined mentally. We also know that it appears human, which virtually eliminates it from the realm of possibility, as the parallel evolution on another planet of homo sapiens is extremely unlikely. However, the Caretaker’s kind may not be humanoid at all. Indeed, his race employs machinery that can nearly instantaneously create items based on the readings of one’s thoughts. It’s similar to what the Squire of Gothos and The Next Generation’s Q can do. However, the squire and the Q can achieve this instantaneously, the squire through a machine and the Q through an omnipotent understanding of the universe. Both the squire and the Q also are energy beings. Might the caretaker as well be one (though of a different race than the squire or the Q) and merely took on human form for the landing party’s sake?

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