Following the water, evolution as we speak and Vulcan mind melds

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 – A new twist in a long-standing debate might answer the fundamental question in the planet forming business: how to make gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. See article.
g Abodes – This generation of Mars explorers has met the challenge to investigate the water history on the red planet. Their task has been compared to one directed towards “following the water.” Recent driving expeditions have highlighted this water history by looking for residual salt flats. See article.
g Life – Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at the Ames Research Center, has long been investigating the coldest and driest places on Earth. In this part of McKay's lecture series, entitled “Drilling in Permafrost on Mars to Search for a Second Genesis of Life,” he touches on the fascination with discovering a new tree of life. See article.
g Intelligence – The forces of variation and selection that shape human language have become issues of extensive research. Documentation of sounds and sound patterns, and their evolution over the past 7000-8000 years allows linguists to quantify the important role of human perception, articulation and imperfect learning as language is passed from one generation to the next. See article.
g Message – What technological manifestations would make an advanced extraterrestrial civilization detectable? See paper. Note: This paper was written in 1992.
g Cosmicus – Now well over a year since China's first manned spaceflight, more information is slowly being released about their next foray into space. Dubbed Shenzhou 6, the flight is currently scheduled for launch this fall. See article.
g Learning – Intelligent design, which holds that only an unspecified superior intellect can account for the complexity of life forms, is increasingly appearing in science forums and journals as an alternative to evolution theory. The U.S. science community is embroiled in a caustic fight over the theory that a higher intelligence and not Darwinist evolution is largely responsible for life on Earth. See article.
g Imagining – For decades the capability of mind melding has been a defining quality of the Vulcan species and society. Vulcans have been performing mind melds in all four series preceding Enterprise, most frequently Spock in “The Original Series” and Tuvok in “Voyager.” The question whether this was morally correct or whether a particular Vulcan was capable of mind melds at all never occurred — until “Star Trek Enterprise.” See article.
g Aftermath – If we hear from ET, not only can we expect his civilization to be an old one with a great time lag in correspondence, a SETI astronomer says. Could this limit the impact of extraterrestrial contact upon humanity? See article. Note: This article is from 2001.

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