The Saturn system, dinosaur close to sprawl and a gaggle of Romulan sites

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 – Ringed Saturn and its moons provide a model of what the early solar system may have looked like — key knowledge in understanding how life came about. Now ultraviolet images of Saturn's rings indicates much of the system is filled with ice, as well as atoms derived from water. A cloud of oxygen extends millions of miles outward from Saturn, which may hint at collisions between unseen icy moons. See article.
g Abodes – The largest earthquake in 40 years and the devastating tsunami it unleashed have raised unwarranted concerns that in their wake further geological disasters might follow. Though earthquake zones and volcanoes are located close to one another, a volcanic eruption isn’t likely following an earthquake in this case. See article.
g Life – Near the sprawl of the Capital Beltway, an amateur paleontologist found what he says are the first footprints ever uncovered of a 6-foot-long plant-eating dinosaur that roamed the Earth about 100 million years ago. In addition to being the first tracks ever found of the dinosaur, the footprints are the first evidence that members of the Hypsilophodon family roamed what is now Maryland. See article.
g Intelligence – The human brain’s remarkable flexibility to understand a variety of signals as language extends to an unusual whistle language used by shepherds on one of the Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa. See article.
g Cosmicus – In 2007, NASA’s Kepler Mission will begin the space-based search for extrasolar planets. As a satellite, Kepler is the first observatory capable of finding Earth-size worlds in the habitable zone of distant Suns. In other words, Kepler may find "good places to live." See article.
g Learning – Now here’s a course that more schools ought to offer: article.
g Imagining – As I research the evolution of our next sci-fi extraterrestrial, let me leave you with a gaggle of sites dedicated to the first major Star Trek alien: the Romulan. The sites don’t say much about Romulans came to be (they’re Vulcans who many millennia ago settled another world), but it does give a lot of linguistic and cultural information about the race — which is just as important to know about intelligent species as their biology. See article.
g Aftermath – Here’s one common man’s musings on the consequences for society if extraterrestrial intelligence is discovered: "Inevitably society would change should extraterrestrial intelligence be discovered. The question is to what extent. We might react in the same way we did with the new millennium when it was imminent, but it proved to be much ado about almost nothing. The same may be true for the discovery of one or more extraterrestrial civilizations. On the other hand, the extreme opposite is a scenario where all of our worst fears are fulfilled." For more, see article.

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