Star hatchery, Project BAMBI and Pierson’s Puppeteer

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 – NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has uncovered a hatchery for massive stars. A new striking image from the infrared telescope shows a vibrant cloud called the Trifid Nebula dotted with glowing stellar "incubators." Deep inside these incubators are rapidly growing embryonic stars, whose warmth Spitzer was able to see for the first time with its powerful heat-seeking eyes. See article.
g Abodes – NASA scientists using data from the Indonesian earthquake calculated it affected the Earth's rotation, decreased the length of day, slightly changed the planet's shape and shifted the North Pole by centimeters. See article.
g Life – Scientists working off the Yucatan Peninsula are preparing to use sound waves to search for information about an asteroid that may have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But environmental activists are trying to shut the project down, saying the technology could harm whales, sea turtles and several varieties of fish that provide a livelihood for thousands of Mexicans along the gulf coast. See article.
g Intelligence – Researchers are rewriting the rules for human genetics, and their findings have medical implications for conditions ranging from diabetes to cancer to heart disease. Going out the window is the untouchable "one gene-one protein" rule, which said that a single gene makes only one protein. It's gone because of the discovery of a process called alternative splicing, in which a single gene can make many different proteins. See article.
g Message – The search for extraterrestrial life need not be limited to the government or scientists. Don’t believe it? Then check out this Web site, “Amateur SETI: Project BAMBI (Bob and Mike’s Big Investment),” which describes the design and construction of a 4 GHz amateur radio telescope dedicated to SETI, at article.
g Cosmicus – A team of researchers is looking to the moon to develop the tools future astronauts may need to ward off potentially life-threatening levels of space radiation. Now mid-way through their NASA-funded study, the researchers are working to determine whether a set of electrically charged shield spheres atop 40-meter masts could deflect radiation from a populated moonbase. See article.
g Learning – It was another good day for science literacy. A federal judge on Thursday ordered the removal of stickers placed in high school biology textbooks that call evolution “a theory, not a fact,” saying they were an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. See article.
g Imagining – How might Pierson’s Puppeteer, the strange, three-legged creatures from Larry Niven’s “Ringworld” have evolved? While this site is a bit short on physical evolution, it does discuss how behavioral traits may have evolved. “Star Trek” fans will recall that Niven wrote one of The Animated Series’ episodes, which included the Kzinti and the Slaver stasis field.
g Aftermath – How would we go about deciphering a message sent by extraterrestrials? Two anthropologists suggest that we might gain clues to decoding more complex extraterrestrial messages by examining past attempts to decode languages right here on Earth. See article. Note: This article is from 2003.


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