Fertile universe, life on Titan and supernova doomed mammoths

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 - The universe was a more fertile place soon after it was formed than has previously been suspected. A team of French and Italian astronomers made indeed the surprising discovery of a large and unknown population of distant galaxies observed when the universe was only 10 percent to 30 percent its present age. See article.
g Abodes - When the Cassini-Huygens mission parted Titan's smoggy veil, it revealed a familiar and yet utterly alien landscape, one where now-dry methane rivers carved out channels in mountains of ice. There's no evidence for biology on Titan's frozen terrain, but in this interview with Astrobiology Magazine, David Grinspoon ponders whether life could exist there today. See article. For related story, see “Spying spokes”.
g Life - A distant supernova that exploded 41,000 years ago may have led to the extinction of the mammoth, according to research that will be presented by nuclear scientist Richard Firestone of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Firestone, who conducted this research with Arizona geologist Allen West, will unveil this theory at the 2nd International Conference "The World of Elephants" in Hot Springs, SD. Their theory joins the list of possible culprits responsible for the demise of mammoths, which last roamed North America roughly 13,000 years ago. Scientists have long eyed climate change, disease, or intensive hunting by humans as likely suspects. See article.
g Intelligence - Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of two newborns dating back 27,000 years while excavating a hillside in northern Austria, the scientist in charge of the project said Monday. See article.
g Message - Whatever form extraterrestrials take, why—if they exist—don’t they get in touch with us? See article.
g Cosmicus - Global Aerospace Corporation is proposing a new way of exploring Mars that combines the reach of orbiters and high resolution observations of rovers by using be a balloon that can be steered in the right direction and that would drop small science packages over the target sites. See article.
g Learning - State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell vowed Wednesday to keep "intelligent design" out of California's classrooms, which he believes are not a place for religious beliefs. See article.
g Imagining - What about the invading aliens from the X-Files: Are they plausible? A book released a few years ago that addresses the topic is “The Science of the X-Files,” by Jeanne Cavelos. There’s a review of the book (look near the end for a discussion on the extraterrestrial biology) at article.
g Aftermath - Here’s an interesting book for some astrobiological reading: “After Contact: The Human Response to Extraterrestrial Life”by Albert A. Harrison. See reviews.

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First stars, Voyager 1 at the border and defending evolution

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 - What did the very first stars look like? How did they live and die? Astronomers have ideas, but no proof. The first stars are so distant and formed so long ago that they are invisible to our best telescopes. See article.
g Abodes - Why go to Mars - the answer to one of the biggest questions in the universe might be right under our noses? See article.
g Life - Scientists are now revisiting, and perhaps revising, their thinking about how Archaea, an ancient kingdom of single-celled microorganisms, are involved in maintaining the global balance of nitrogen and carbon. Researchers have discovered the first Archaea known to oxidize ammonia for energy and metabolize carbon dioxide by successfully growing the tentatively named, Nitrosopumilus maritimus, in the lab. See article.
g Intelligence - Psychology researchers have long understood and accepted the importance of an individual's brain activity in motor areas when interpreting the actions of others. However, much less was known about the role the body plays in helping individuals process and understand the same information. With the help of two patients suffering from an extremely rare degenerative neurological condition, a Rutgers-Newark Psychology Professor and his team of researchers have established that the body plays a significant role in helping humans to perceive and understand the actions of others. See article.
g Message - Unexplained or incompletely studied astrophysical phenomena such as odd star populations of the galaxy NGC 5907 or the asymmetry of increases and decreases in the brightness of long-period variable stars provide us with a number of locations that may be studied for signs of Dyson Shells. If we free ourselves from anthropocentric perspectives and combine the ideas of Dyson, Minsky and Suffern as well as the technological progress of recent decades, we can envision advanced civilizations at the limits of physical laws. Observations directed towards stars decreasing in visual magnitude or searching for stellar occultations by large cold dark objects, merit serious consideration as future strategies in optical SETI. See article.
g Cosmicus - NASA's Voyager 1 has passed into the border region at the edge of the solar system and now is sending back information about this never-before-explored area, say scientists at the University of Maryland. See article.
g Learning - A former physics teacher testified that his rural school board ignored faculty protests before deciding to introduce the concept of "intelligent design'' to high school students. See article.
g Imagining - Book alert: Here’s an oldie worth finding in a used bookstore: Walter E. Meyers’ “Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction.” It examines how science fiction treats aliens using languages, aptly pointing out fallacies and offering some intriguing speculations. See article for a review.
g Aftermath - Looking for some interesting reading on “first contact”? Try the science fiction anthology “First Contact,” edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff. The book came out in 1997. Here’s a review (though it’s less than flattering).

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Gamma-ray burst afterglow, changing face of Mars and ET messenger probes

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 - An Italian team of astronomers has observed the afterglow of a gamma-ray burst that is the farthest known ever. With a measured redshift of 6.3, the light from this very remote astronomical source has taken 12,700 million years to reach us. It is thus seen when the universe was less than 900 million years old, or less than 7 percent its present age. See article.
g Abodes - New gullies that did not exist in mid-2002 have appeared on a Martian sand dune. That's just one of the surprising discoveries that have resulted from the extended life of NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, which this month began its ninth year in orbit around Mars. Boulders tumbling down a Martian slope left tracks that weren't there two years ago. New impact craters formed since the 1970s suggest changes to age-estimating models. And for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress. See article. For more, see “Mars: A history of false impressions”.
g Life - One of the remaining challenges for evolutionary developmental studies of mammals, whose evolution is best known from their teeth, is how their tooth shape is altered during development. Researchers of the University of Helsinki together with their Japanese colleagues from the University of Kioto now propose a 'balance of induction' mechanism directing the placement of tooth shape features called cusps. See articles. For related story about teeth, see “Nuclear Tests Leave Mark in Teeth, Reveal Age”.
g Intelligence - Scientists have now found physiological reasons why you can become forgetful or, even worse, rude as you age. See article.
g Message - How might we detect an extraterrestrial messenger probe already in the solar system? See article. Note: This article is from 1983.
g Cosmicus - Jack Farmer of Arizona State University is an astrobiologist whose attention is often focused on Mars. Farmer is a longtime member of a community of scientists working to understand both the geologic history of Mars and the planet's potential to support life. At the recent Earth System Processes II conference, Farmer gave a talk on the current state of understanding about Mars: what we know and what we'd like to know. In this, the third and final part of a three-part series, he outlines the options for future Mars exploration. See article.
g Learning - Each time the effort to introduce creationism into classrooms starts up again, so does legislation aimed against evolution. Learn about the rash of recent cases, plus a look at historically pertinent court cases. See article.
g Imagining - Book alert: "Extraterrestrials, Where Are They?" by Ben Zuckerman and Michael H. Hart (ed.) offers a critical analysis by leading experts in a range of sciences, of the plausibility that other intelligent life forms do exists. Exploration of the solar system, and observations with telescopes that probe deep space, have come up empty-handed in searches for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Many experts in the fields of astronomy, biology, chemistry and physics now argue that the evidence points to the conclusion that technological civilizations are rare. After 10 billion years and among hundreds of billions of stars, we may well possess the most advanced brains in the Milky Way. This second edition elucidates many new aspects of research on extraterrestrial intelligence life, specifically biological considerations of the question. See reviews.
g Aftermath - Here’s an intriguing paper published earlier this year and translated from German for Astrosociology.com: “Futurological Reflections on the Confrontation of Mankind with an Extraterrestrial Civilization”.

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Intracluster sunlight, quick-growing Neanderthals and ‘intelligent design’ posing as theory

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 - Case Western Reserve University astronomers have captured the deepest wide-field image ever of the nearby Virgo cluster of galaxies, directly revealing for the first time a vast, complex web of "intracluster starlight" - nearly 1,000 times fainter than the dark night sky - filling the space between the galaxies within the cluster. See article.
g Abodes - Open University researchers have uncovered startling new evidence about an extreme period of a sudden, fatal dose of global warming some 180 million years ago during the time of the dinosaurs. The scientists' findings could provide vital clues about climate change happening today and in the future. See article.
g Life - The evolution of complex and physiologically remarkable structures such as the vertebrate eye has long been a focus of intrigue and theorizing by biologists. In work reported this week in Current Biology, the evolutionary history of a critical eye protein has revealed a previously unrecognized relationship between certain components of vertebrate eyes and those of the more primitive light-sensing systems of invertebrates. The findings help clarify our conceptual framework for understanding how the vertebrate eye, as we know it, has emerged over evolutionary time. See article.
g Intelligence - Recent research suggested that ancient Neanderthals might have had an accelerated childhood compared to that of modern humans but that seems flawed, based on a new assessment by researchers from Ohio State University and the University of Newcastle. See article.
g Message - In SETI program planning, higher priority should be given in the near-term to those probe and artifact searches which can be carried out quickly and inexpensively, in preference to larger more expensive beacon searches which should be mounted in the decades ahead. See article.
g Cosmicus - A private group has taken one small step toward the prospect of building a futuristic space elevator. See article.
g Learning - The lawsuit over whether intelligent design should be taught in schools alongside evolution began in federal court on Monday with defendants' attorneys calling it a scientific theory and opponents saying it was an effort to put God in the classroom. See article.
g Imagining - Watch the film "Alien vs. Predator” you might feel there was little left to lose in seeing "Exorcist - The Beginning". As it happens, both movies, although undeniably bad, are thought provoking. Humans have a longstanding fascination with powerful, malevolent entities, whether extraterrestrial or supernatural, and the existence of such entities, however farfetched in its cinematic presentation, is a fair topic for inquiry and speculation. See article.
g Aftermath - Here’s an intriguing read: the final report of “The Workshop on the Societal Implications of Astrobiology.” See report. Note: The workshop was held in 1999.


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Stellar twins, detecting ET’s robotic probes, and the Galactic Club

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 - An astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and his colleagues have photographed a pair of stellar twins in infrared light, which penetrates the dust. And these babies are whoppers, weighing several times the mass of the Sun. See article.
g Abodes - University of Arizona and Japanese scientists are convinced that evidence at last settles decades-long arguments about what objects bombarded the early inner solar system in a cataclysm 3.9 billion years ago. See article.
g Life - Cosmic Ancestry — commonly known as panspermia — is a new theory pertaining to evolution and the origin of life on Earth. It holds that life on Earth was seeded from space, and that life's evolution to higher forms depends on genetic programs that come from space (It accepts the Darwinian account of evolution that does not require new genetic programs.). Supporters say it is a wholly scientific, testable theory for which evidence is accumulating. For a Web set on the theory, click here.
g Intelligence - A team of scientists has solved a key mystery of visual perception. Why do pictures look the same when viewed from different angles? See article.
g Message - The search for extraterrestrial intelligence must include complementary observing programs that investigate our solar system and near Earth. Solar system observing strategies involve a search for energy (e.g., artificial microwaves) or physical manifestations (e.g., exploratory robotic probes) that may be present. Artificial electromagnetic emissions from robotic probes may be detectable using existing ground-based radio-telescope observatories like Arecibo, or those undergoing construction such as the Allen Telescope Array. See article.
g Cosmicus - All companies set goals, but newly formed 4Frontiers Corp. is eyeing some expansive horizons. The company's mission: to open a small human settlement on Mars within 20 years or so. See article. For related Mars stories, see: “Europe space officials extend Mars Express mission”, “Summit Science: Spirit Rover Has a Field Day on Mars” and “Mars doubles in brightness”.
g Learning - Intelligent design is presented as a legitimate scientific theory and an alternative to Darwinism, but a close look at the arguments shows they don't pass scientific muster. So why are scientists worried? See article.
g Imagining - What is the “Galactic Club”? See article.

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A recipe for planets, lunar dirt-digging contest and ‘From the Earth to the Moon’

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 - The first survey of the entire northern Milky Way in 40 years is shedding fresh light on the life-cycle of stars in our astronomical backyard. The survey, which publishes its initial findings today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, uses the latest high resolution instruments to seek out stars and nebulae in the early and late phases of their evolution, stages that are rarely observed because they are so short-lived. See article.
g Abodes - When Deep Impact smashed into comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005, it released the ingredients of our solar system's primordial "soup." Now, astronomers using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Deep Impact have analyzed that soup and begun to come up with a recipe for what makes planets, comets and other bodies in our solar system. See article.
g Life - Researchers at The Institute for Genomic Research have come to a startling conclusion. Armed with the powerful tools of comparative genomics and mathematics, institute scientists have concluded that researchers might never fully describe some bacteria and viruses - because their genomes are infinite. Sequence one strain of the species, and scientists will find significant new genes. See article.
g Intelligence - The popular media has portrayed men and women as psychologically different as two planets - Mars and Venus - but these differences are vastly overestimated and the two sexes are more similar in personality, communication, cognitive ability and leadership than realized, according to a review of 46 meta-analyses conducted over the last 20 years. See article.
g Message - If extraterrestrial life and intelligence exist, and if these ETI have ever engaged in, or presently are engaging in, interstellar exploration or communication, this most likely will involve the transmission of material artifacts. Some evidence of this activity may be apparent from within the confines of the Solar System and thus could be detected by a suitable observational effort. See article.
g Cosmicus - NASA announced a $250,000 prize for the team that can win a lunar dirt-digging contest that will take place here on Earth. See article.
g Learning - Not only did NASA unveil its new plan to send human explorers to the Moon by 2018, but IMAX released “Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon in 3D” nationwide today and – since good things come in threes – HBO Video released its new DVD box set “From the Earth to the Moon: The Signature Edition”.
g Imagining - Could the legendary dragons of Pern from Anne McCaffrey’s famous science fiction novels actually exist? Welcome to the theoretical science of dracogenetics. See article.
g Aftermath - Looking for some interesting reading on “first contact”? Try the science fiction anthology “First Contact,” edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff. The book came out in 1997. Here’s a review (though it’s less than flattering).


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Planets trading places, the Artifact Hypothesis and first impressions

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 - Comet Tempel 1 may have been born in the region of the solar system occupied by Uranus and Neptune today, according to one possibility from an analysis of the comet's debris blasted into space by NASA's Deep Impact mission. If correct, the observation supports a wild scenario for the solar system's youth, where the planets Uranus and Neptune may have traded places and scattered comets to deep space. See article. For related story, see “Don’t judge a comet by its cover” at article.
g Abodes - Dr. Jack Farmer of Arizona State University is an astrobiologist whose attention is often focused on Mars. Farmer is a longtime member of a community of scientists working to understand both the geologic history of Mars and the planet's potential to support life. At the recent Earth System Processes II conference, Farmer gave a talk on the current state of understanding about Mars: what we know and what we'd like to know. In this, the second of a three-part series, he discusses what scientists have learned from recent NASA and ESA missions to the red planet. See article.
g Life - By examining how proteins have evolved, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have discovered a set of simple "rules" that nature appears to use to design proteins, rules the scientists have now employed to create artificial proteins that look and function just like their natural counterparts. See article.
g Intelligence - New computer simulations show three modes of locomotion are most efficient for humans: walking, running, and a third one that for some reason we don't employ. See article.
g Message - The Artifact Hypothesis states that a technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilization has undertaken a long-term program of galactic exploration via transmission of material artifacts. Four general classes of unconcealed observable artifacts are potentially available to test this Hypothesis: Astroengineering activities, self-replicating artifacts, passive artifacts, and active probes. Of these, only active self-repairing probes are likely both to exist and to be observable from within the Solar System. See article.
g Cosmicus - A bike-like centrifuge that creates artificial gravity may help astronauts combat muscle atrophy in space. See article.
g Learning - A court case that begins Monday in Pennsylvania will be the first to determine whether it is legal to teach a controversial idea called intelligent design in public schools. See article.
g Imagining - One of the creepiest concepts in science-fiction horror has been transformed into a huggable soft and cuddly toy. See article.
g Aftermath - If some day we decide to transmit intentional messages to the stars, rather than solely listen as current SETI programs do, what would we say? What sort of first impression would we want to give our celestial correspondents? See article.

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Life on Titan, astroecology and ‘Magnificent Desolation’

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 using the Hubble Space Telescope have identified the source of a mysterious blue light surrounding a supermassive black hole in our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy. Though the light has puzzled astronomers for more than a decade, the new discovery makes the story even more mysterious. See article.
g Abodes - Recent findings from NASA's Cassini spacecraft and new discoveries about organisms here on Earth that thrive in extreme conditions are causing scientists to rethink the possibility that there may be life on Saturn's cloudy moon Titan. See article.
g Life - One subfield of astrobiology is astroecology, studies of interactions of microorganisms and plants with planetary materials in meteorites. The results are important in relation to the origins of life, terraforming and the cosmological future of life in space. See primer.
g Intelligence - The short-term memory problems that accompany normal aging are associated with an inability to filter out surrounding distractions, not problems with focusing attention, according to a study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. See article.
g Message - Modern Exobiology and Astrobiology studies now being sponsored by NASA, with participation by other nations and academia, are doing more than just ponder the probabilities of extraterrestrial life. Technological and human resources are being invested in remote-sensing efforts like the Terrestrial Planet Finder and robotic probe missions to search, in-situ, for clear signs of ET life on Mars, Europa and other promising solar system bodies. To further enhance and broaden the search for ETI, it’s now time to invest in methods, such as SETV, which search for clear evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence locally to aid in proving we are not alone in the universe. See article.
g Cosmicus - According to the Vision for Space Exploration, NASA plans to send astronauts back to the Moon by 2020 and, eventually, to set up an outpost. For people to live and work on the Moon safely, the radiation problem must be solved. See article.
g Learning - “Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon in 3D” is a stunning look at what it must have been like for the 12 NASA astronauts who traversed across the lunar surface during the six Apollo landings. Borrowing its title from words spoken by astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin – the second person to walk on the Moon – the IMAX film follows the landings, Moonwalks and thoughts of those few explorers that made the trip. See article.
g Imagining - Could the Pak of Larry Niven's Ringworld universe possibly evolve? They've got a homepage to discuss that and other questions about the intriguing fiction alien race. See article.
g Aftermath - The next big discovery in science will be the proof that alien life exists — and it could come any day now. See article.

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Dark matter galaxy, follow the water and searching for extraterrestrial probes

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 - The detection of a super massive black hole without a massive host galaxy is the surprising result from a large Hubble and VLT study of quasars. This is the first convincing discovery of such an object. One intriguing explanation is that the host galaxy may be made almost exclusively of dark matter. See article.
g Abodes - Astrobiologist Jack Farmer’s attention is often focused on Mars. Farmer is a longtime member of a community of scientists working to understand both the geologic history of Mars and the planet's potential to support life. At the recent Earth System Processes II conference, Farmer gave a talk on the current state of understanding about Mars: what we know and what we'd like to know. In this, the first of a three-part series, he explains why "following the water" is central to NASA's program of Mars exploration. See article.
g Life - A fossil record of the Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) shows population-wide changes in body size and morphology in response to climate change over the last 3,000 years. The observed changes offer predictions about the response of the species to future climate change, and the impact on the ecosystem. The research is published in the open access journal, BMC Ecology. See article.
g Intelligence - New research finds the human immune system has foregone evolutionary changes that would allow it to produce better antibodies in less time because the improved antibodies would be far more likely to attack the body's own tissues. The Rice University study finds the immune system has evolved a near-perfect balance for producing antibodies that are both effective against pathogens and unlikely to cause autoimmune disease. See article.
g Message - Interstellar spacecraft are superior to electromagnetic wave propagation for extrasolar exploration and communication. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence should include a search for extraterrestrial probes. See article. Note: This article is from 1983.
g Cosmicus - The U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved a bill that would clear the way for NASA to buy the Russian Soyuz vehicles it needs to continue to occupy the International Space Station beyond this year. See article.
g Imagining - If alien lifeforms did arrive on Earth, what might they look like? Contemporary images of alien lifeforms differ significantly from previous ones. See article.
g Aftermath - Do archaeologists and anthropologists have anything to teach the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, where encounters are at the distance of light-years, and a round-trip exchange could take millennia? See article.

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Pulsar devours companion, life gets off to easy start and New Mexico’s new spaceport

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 - The European Space Agency's Integral space observatory, together with NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer spacecraft, has found a fast-spinning pulsar in the process of devouring its companion. This finding supports the theory that the fastest-spinning isolated pulsars get that fast by cannibalizing a nearby star. See article.
g Abodes - In a twist to the proverbial snowball effect, warmer Arctic temperatures are stimulating plant growth, which darkens the landscape and causes more sunlight to be absorbed rather than reflected. The result: Winter heating could increase by 70 percent, according to a new study. See article.
g Life - Life was easier to start than originally thought: An international team of scientists, leaded by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona researchers, has discovered that RNA early molecules were much more resistant than was thought until now. According to the conclusions of the study, they may have developed enough to contain around 100 genes, which is considered to be the minimum quantity required for the most basic forms of primitive life, similar to the bacteria we have today. The research was published in Nature Genetics. See article.
g Intelligence - Schizotypes are people able to walk the fine line between creativity and insanity and a new study confirms that they rely more heavily on the right sides of their brains than the rest of us. See article.
g Message - Any nonreproducing alien probes discovered in the Solar System during the normal course of future SETI research would most likely have been sent by extraterrestrial civilizations located within a 1000 light-year radius of the Sun, whereas any self-reproducing devices similarly detected probably originated far outside this exploration sphere. See article.
g Cosmicus - New Mexico state officials foresee a Southwest Regional Spaceport as a boon for business. See article.
g Learning - Here’s a neat Web site for elementary students: History of the Universe site tells the story of the history of the universe. Click “Earlier” and “Later” to follow the story. See site.
g Imagining - Are there any alternatives to DNA or RNA, as an “X-Files” episode said there was? See article.
g Aftermath - How might we characterize the political significance of any announcement of discovering extraterrestrial intelligence? How about using the Torino Scale, which characterizes asteroid impacts, as a model to assist the discussion and interpretation of any claimed discovery of ETI? See article.

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NASA announces how we’ll return to Moon

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 - The Hubble Space Telescope has "caught" the Boomerang Nebula in a set of new images. This reflecting cloud of dust and gas has two nearly symmetric lobes of matter that are being ejected from a central star. Over the last 1,500 years, nearly one and a half times the mass of our Sun has been lost by the central star of the Boomerang Nebula in an ejection process known as a bipolar outflow. See article.
g Abodes - Saturn's moon Titan has long been a place of interest to astrobiologists, primarily because of its apparent similarities to the early Earth at the time life first started. A thick atmosphere composed primarily of nitrogen and abundant organic molecules (the ingredients of life as we know it) are among the important similarities between these two otherwise dissimilar planetary bodies. See article. For related story, see “NASA Cassini Radar Images Show Dramatic Shoreline on Titan”.
g Life - New research suggests that plant eaters may prefer to eat exotic species over domestic plants. The findings could lead to better strategies for controlling the billions of dollars in damage that invasive plants cause every year. See article.
g Intelligence - Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed tools for studying the chemistry of the brain, neuron by neuron. The analytical techniques can probe the spatial and temporal distribution of biologically important molecules, such as vitamin E, and explore the chemical messengers behind thought, memory and emotion. See article.
g Message - What is astroengineering, and how might it help us determine if alien civilizations exist? See entry. For related entry, see “Solar astroengineering”.
g Cosmicus - NASA has unveiled an ambitious blueprint for returning American astronauts to the moon by 2018 using new rockets based on shuttle propulsion technology and a new reusable crew vehicle Administrator Mike Griffin described as "Apollo on steroids." See article. For related stories, see: “NASA releases plans for next generation spacecraft”; “Lunar Flight Plan”; “NASA estimates moon rocket will cost $104 million”; and “Frequently Asked Questions”.
g Learning - Book alert: September is the time for school and the show of Sagittarius in the night sky. School has surprises but so does Sagittarius. Did you know that within the boundaries of this constellation there lies a galaxy that's about to get eaten up by our own Milky Way? Read the book Voyages to the Stars and Galaxies by Andrew Fraknoi, David Morrison, and Sidney Wolff to learn about the constellations, stars and their marvelously unique and sometimes hungry properties. Anthropic or not, you'll see that we're in one amazing universe. See reviews.
g Imagining - Here’s a neat Web site that examines the life cycle of the Alien — the extraterrestrial from said movie. It’s a little light on evolutionary speculation and discussing plausibility, but the life cycle is thoroughly described.
g Aftermath - Among scientists involved in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, it’s quite common to be focused on the future, ever mindful that it could take years, or even decades, to find a signal from otherworldly intelligence. But if historian Steve Dick has his way, astronomers will also turn their attention toward the past as they search for life beyond Earth — to discover the aftereffects of contact between two intelligent cultures. See article. Note: This article is from 2003.

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Mystery stardust, reducing atmosphere and the anthropology of science fiction

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 - An ancient, near-death star with a disc of metal-rich dust orbiting around it has recently been discovered by astronomers. The dust's origin is a mystery, though, as it should have been sucked into the star within a few hundred years of the star's death. See article.
g Abodes - Using primitive meteorites called chondrites as their models, earth and planetary scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have performed outgassing calculations and shown that the early Earth's atmosphere was a reducing one, chock full of methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water vapor. See article.
g Life - DNA is the building block for life on Earth. But it is a highly complex molecule, and could not have arranged itself spontaneously. What did it develop from? Astrobiologists examine possible ancestors of DNA: nucleic acids called PNA, p-RNA, and TNA. See article. Note: This article is from 2001.
g Intelligence - Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered a discrete region of the monkey brain that processes pitch, the relative high and low points of sound, by recognizing a single musical note played by different instruments. See article.
g Message - In 2001, California astronomers broadened the search for extraterrestrial intelligence with a new experiment to look for powerful light pulses beamed our way from other star systems. Scientists from the University of California's Lick Observatory, the SETI Institute, UC-Santa Cruz, and UC-Berkeley used the Lick Observatory's 40-inch Nickel Telescope with a new pulse-detection system capable of finding laser beacons from civilizations many light-years distant. Unlike other optical SETI searches, this new experiment is largely immune to false alarms that slow the reconnaissance of target stars. See article.
g Cosmicus - Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) announced recently that it will develop a Falcon 9 booster – an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle class vehicle. See article.
g Learning - Here’s a neat classroom activity courtesy of NASA: Students will construct a Winogradsky Column to observe the growth of microbes in a column of mud. During this investigation students will develop a hypothesis, record their observations and results and form conclusions. They will compare and contrast their methods during the investigation with those of the astrobiologists performing research in the field and the laboratory. See lesson.
g Imagining - Scour your used bookstore shelves for this interesting critical examination of science fiction aliens: George E. Slusser’s and Eric S. Rabkin’s (eds.) “Aliens: the anthropology of science fiction” (1987). It’s an excellent collection of essays and includes Larry Niven, Greg Benford, essays on dragons in S, friendly aliens, supermen as aliens, telepaths as aliens, robots as aliens, a history of dolls as aliens, Wells' aliens, “Neuromancer” and “Enemy Mine.”
g Aftermath - With humanity now on the verge of being capable to leave its home world, Earth, scientists have begun to wrestle with the consequences of this next great journey; of the social impact humanity will have upon discovering life elsewhere, be it fossil, bacterial or an intelligent civilization. See article. Note: This article is from 1999.


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Farthest space explosion ever, space storms and speaking up for evolution

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 team of international researchers announced today the detection of the farthest space explosion ever recorded, breaking the previous record by 500 million light-years. See article.
g Abodes - Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus is "absolutely" a highlight of the Cassini mission and should be targeted in future searches for life, says the leader of the spacecraft's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team. See article.
g Life - Feathers are a little more complicated than one might think. Here’s a nice overview with great artwork, of a feather’s parts and types.
g Intelligence - By examining how sounds are registered during the process of learning, UC-Irvine neurobiologists have discovered a neural coding mechanism that the brain relies upon to register the intensity of memories based on the importance of the experience. See article.
g Message - Who is SETI scientist Seth Shostak? See article.
g Cosmicus - A breakthrough by a team of British, U.S. and French scientists will help protect astronauts, spacecraft and satellites from radiation hazards experienced in space. Reporting in the journal Nature, the team describe how their study of rare and unusual space storms provided a unique opportunity to test conflicting theories about the behavior of high energy particles in the Van Allen radiation belts - a volatile region 19,000 km above the Earth. See article.
g Learning - Thirty-eight Nobel Prize laureates asked Kansas state educators to reject proposed science standards that treat evolution as a seriously questionable theory, calling it instead the "indispensable'' foundation of biology. See article.
g Imagining - Like first contact stories? Then be sure to read Gordon Dickson’s “The Alien Way” (1965). See article.
g Aftermath - Add one more worry to the computerized world of the 21st century. Could a signal from the stars broadcast by an alien intelligence also carry harmful information, in the spirit of a computer virus? Could star folk launch a "disinformation" campaign -- one that covers up aspects of their culture? Perhaps they might even mask the "real" intent of dispatching a message to other civilizations scattered throughout the Cosmos. See article. Note: This article is from 2003.

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Asteroid is mini-planet, diverse sauropods and relating to alien species

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 - New observations of a young star and its surroundings are like a snapshot of our own solar system when it was forming, astronomers have announced. See article.
g Abodes - Observations of 1 Ceres, the largest known asteroid, have revealed that the object may be a "mini planet," and may contain large amounts of pure water ice beneath its surface. See article. For related stories, see “Evidence says some comets may have become asteroids" and “NASA Research Finds Green Sand Crystals Are in Comet Tempel 1”.
g Life - With their long necks and tails, sauropod dinosaurs - famous as the Sinclair gasoline logo and Fred Flintstone's gravel pit tractor - are easy to recognize, in part because they all seem to look alike. The largest animals known to have walked the earth, sauropods were common in North America during the middle of the dinosaur era but were thought to have been pushed to extinction by more specialized plant-eaters at the end of that era. New discoveries, however, are showing that one lineage of sauropods diversified at the end of the dinosaur era, University of Michigan paleontologist Jeffrey Wilson says. See article.
g Intelligence - Human evolution, Chicago researchers report, is still under way, in what has become our most important organ: the brain. In two related papers published in Science, they show that two genes linked to brain size are rapidly evolving in humans. The researchers looked at variations of microcephalin and ASPM within modern humans, and found for each gene one class of variants has arisen recently and has been spreading rapidly because it is favored by selection. See article.
g Message - SETI researchers have long had to beg time on instruments built for conventional radio astronomy. Now they're building one of their own. See article.
g Cosmicus - The Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity are the Energizer Bunnies of planetary exploration. Designed to last for only 90 days, they are still going strong after nearly two years. Their journeys on Mars have provided exquisite detail of the planet's surface, proving definitively that liquid water once existed on this now arid world. Steve Squyres, the Principal Investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover project, has now published a book about what it took to get to Mars. See article.
g Learning - Young children can perform certain kinds of math operations before ever receiving any kind formal math training, a new study reports. See article.
g Imagining - Like stories about alien biologies/environments? Be sure to scour your favorite used bookstores for Sheri Tepper’s “Grass” (1979), in which the complex ecology of a savannah world nets humans in parasitic parody of foxhunting.
g Aftermath Could humanity ever relate to an alien species? Consider the questioning context of these online speculations about why "Star Trek is human centered?" The latter is an interesting question, possibly creating a situation dealing with a prejudice on the behalf of the writers and producers. However, would a series completely dedicated to another species, such as the Romulans, be successful in a television market? Is it possible that the reasons it wouldn’t be might indicate humanity may care little about an alien species other than as a potential threat? See article.

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Comets, ‘Threshold’ and the Great Silence

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 - When planetary scientists announced on July 29 that they had discovered a new planet larger than Pluto, the news overshadowed the two other objects the group had also found. But all three objects are odd additions to the solar system, and as such could revolutionize our understanding of how our part of the celestial neighborhood evolved. See article.
g Abodes - Painting by the numbers is a good description of how scientists create pictures of everything from atoms in our bodies to asteroids and comets in our solar system. Researchers involved in NASA's Deep Impact mission have been doing this kind of work since the mission's July 4 collision with comet Tempel 1. See article. For related story, see “Spitzer and Deep Impact build recipe for comet soup”.
g Life - Julia Child and physicist Philip Morrison once cooked up (and sampled) "primordial soup," a mixture of ingredients said to be the materials from which life sprang on Earth. How accurate is this notion? David Deamer studies how some molecules self-assemble into order, and has developed new theories about how life evolved from components on Earth. Listen to a talk with him, watch hands-on experiments and see vintage footage of Julia Child tasting the soup; scroll to “Life’s Ingredients.”
g Intelligence - The September issue of Genome Research presents a series of studies that provide insight into the evolution and variation of primate genomes. The issue appeared online and in print concomitant with the publication of the chimpanzee genome sequence in the journal Nature. See papers.
g Message - Book alert: In response to Enrico Fermi's famous 1950 question concerning the existence of advanced civilizations elsewhere, physicist Stephen Webb in “If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens... Where Is Everybody? Fifty Solutions to Fermi's Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life” critically examines 50 resolutions to explain the total absence of empirical evidence for probes, starships, and communications from extraterrestrials. He focuses on our Milky Way Galaxy, which to date has yielded no objects or signals that indicate the existence of alien beings with intelligence and technology. His comprehensive analysis covers topics ranging from the Drake equation and Dyson spheres to the panspermia hypothesis and anthropic arguments. Of special interest are the discussions on the DNA molecule, the origin of life on Earth, and the threats to organic evolution on this planet (including mass extinctions). Webb himself concludes that the "great silence" in nature probably results from humankind's being the only civilization now in this galaxy, if not in the entire universe. This richly informative and very engaging book is recommended for most academic and public library science collections. See reviews.
g Cosmicus - Book alert: Scour your used bookstores for “Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience,” by Eric M. Jones and Ben R. Finney (eds.). Most other books about interstellar travel are the same, talking about only the technology. But this one talks about the human part of it. The ideas range from "Why do it?" to "It's all so easy!" The multiple viewpoints are very interesting. See reviews.
g Learning - If you’re doing some basic research on evolution for a high school class project or to write a letter to the editor, a great place to start is Berkeley University’s “Evolution Wing” of its “UCMP Exhibit Hall.” These exhibits trace evolutionary thought as it has developed over time, pausing to ponder the contributions of scientists and thinkers including Aristotle, Darwin and Wallace. See reviews.
g Imagining - The creep factor is certainly high when you have bugs, blood and people compelled to move in patterns sent from another world. Such is the case in “Threshold,” CBS’ addition to Friday night television sci-fi (premieres today, 9 p.m. EDT), in which a government team is all that stands between a little-understood alien threat and all of mankind. See article.
g Aftermath Here’s an intriguing essay that discusses what might happen if we do too little to contact extraterrestrials; as the authors argue, “…skepticism regarding SETI is at best unfounded and at worst can seriously damage the long-term prospects of humanity. If ETIs exist, no matter whether friendly or adversarial (or even beyond such simple distinctions), they are relevant for our future. To neglect this is contraryy to the basic tenets of transhumanism. To appreciate this, it is only sufficient to imagine the consequences of SETI success for any aspect of transhumanist interests, and then to affirm that such a success can only be achieved without trying if they come to us, which would obviously mean that we are hopelessly lagging in the race for galactic colonization.” See article.

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Galaxy cluster formation, Martian ancestors and interstellar migration

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 -ESA's X-ray observatory, XMM-Newton, has for the first time allowed scientists to study in detail the formation history of galaxy clusters, not only with single arbitrarily selected objects, but with a complete representative sample of clusters. Knowing how these massive objects formed is a key to understanding the past and future of the universe. See article.
g Abodes - Some of the highest quality images ever taken of the Earth's lower crust reveal that the upper and lower crust form in two distinctly different ways. To form the images, the researchers, led by a team from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, analyzed sound waves bounced off structures deep in the Earth, a process similar to creating an ultrasound image. See article.
g Life - Suppose that billions of years ago life developed on Mars. Primitive, tiny organisms that thrived deep within rocks and made a living from water and chemicals seeping through those rocks. Now imagine that a huge asteroid collided with Mars. Millions of Martian rock fragments were thrown into space by the force of the impact. Tough Martian organisms hitchhiked on some of this ejecta. Many pieces went into orbit around the sun and, after hundreds of thousands of years, some of these collided with the Earth. Of those rocks, a few reached the surface. Some hardy Martian organisms survived the journey, colonized the Earth and eventually evolved into the huge variety of life that we know today. Yes, our ancestors may be Martian. See article. Note: This article was written in November 1999.
g Intelligence - The human and the chimpanzee Y chromosomes went their separate ways approximately 6 million years ago. But ever since this evolutionary parting, these two chromosomes have experienced different fates. While the human Y has maintained its count of 27 genes and gene families, some of these same genes on the chimp Y have mutated and gradually become inactive. The authors speculate that one likely reason for such disparity is due to chimpanzee mating habits. See article.
g Message - Should we be looking for extraterrestrial civilizations, rather than just listening for them, as we do in the SETI project? That is the suggestion of a French astronomer, Luc Arnold, in his paper “Transit Lightcurve Signatures of Artificial Objects.” He believes that the transit of large artificial objects in front of a sun could be a used for the emission of attention-getting signals. See article.
g Cosmicus - NASA briefed senior White House officials Wednesday on its plan to spend $100 billion and the next 12 years building the spacecraft and rockets it needs to put humans back on the Moon by 2018. See article.
g Learning - The United States leads the way in areas such as robot-assisted surgery and mobile space robots, but is losing ground in other fields. The United States once dominated in the development of robots designed for service and industry, but now other countries are catching up and even passing the old golden standard. See article.
g Imagining - Here’s an interesting Web site about alien depictions in science fiction: “Life on Other Worlds”.
g Aftermath - As we learn more about our place in the universe, and as we physically move away from our home planet, our cosmic consciousness will only increase. With due respect for present religious traditions whose history stretches back four millennia, the natural God of cosmic evolution and the biological universe, not the supernatural God of the ancient Near East, may be the God of the next millennium. See article.

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Star-stuff, in search of Dyson spheres and theological implications of first contact

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 - Carl Sagan famously said, "We are made of star-stuff." In the last few years, discoveries have revealed how this star-stuff could have played a role in life's origin. While such findings provide hope that life is widespread in the universe, it also creates a challenge for astrobiologists searching for life on other worlds. See article.
g Abodes - The Cassini spacecraft discovered the long, cracked features dubbed "tiger stripes" on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus are very young. They are between 10 and 1,000 years old. See article. For related stories, see “Cloudy Saturn” and “Gravity Assist Bumper Cars.”
g Life - How might life have began? Many scientists today believe in the scalding waters of the deep ocean. See article. Note: This article is a few years old.
g Intelligence - The ability to take in visual cues and basically fill in the blanks allows humans to process information very quickly, but new research shows that it also can lead to misperceptions – like seeing things that are not there. See article.
g Message - Here’s a new take on searching for extraterrestrial life: A UC-Berkeley student is looking for signs of advanced civilizations that have enclosed their home star within a giant sphere at “In Search of Dyson Spheres.” See article.
g Cosmicus - Kepler is a proposed extrasolar planet detection mission that would measure the transit of extrasolar planets in front of their parent star. From the brightness change the planet size can be calculated. From the period the orbital size can be calculated and the planet's temperature estimated. For more, see the NASA Ames Research Center Web page at article.
g Learning - Picture this: Only a half-century from now, some clever scientist in Chicago invents a time machine, a heavy mound of hissing machinery that can transport you millions of years into the past with a precision of a few feet in space, and a few milliseconds in time. So is the new movie “A Sound of Thunder” worth watching? For one SETI scientists perspective, see article.
g Imagining - Like stories about alien biologies/environments? Be sure to scour your favorite used bookstores for C.J. Cherryh’s “The Faded Sun: Kesrith” (1979), which introduces the baggy skinned regal BET Forward.
g Aftermath Book alert: “Many Worlds: The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life, and the Theological Implications,” by Steven J. Dick (ed.), is a provocative collection examining science's impact on theology. Based on a 1998 conference sponsored by the Templeton Foundation, this collection of essays opens with the observation that the Copernican revolution looks insignificant when compared to the discoveries made about the earth and the universe in the last century: we now know, for example, that the universe is billions (not thousands) of light-years big; that it is expanding, not static; that our galaxy is just one of many, not the entirety of the universe. But from looking at modern theology, you wouldn't think anything had changed. The contributors (who include physicists, philosophers, historians of science, and theologians) suggest that cosmological advances might reshape the very fundamentals of theology. Paul C.W. Davies argues that if the universe turns out to be biofriendly (i.e., if given enough time and the right conditions, life will emerge as a matter of course), scientifically savvy thinkers may be compelled to reject atheism and embrace intelligent design theory. The contributors are especially interested in extraterrestrial life: philosopher Ernan McMullin, for example, argues that extraterrestrial intelligence will force Christians to do some hard thinking about original sin, the human soul, and the Incarnation. See reviews.

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Youngest exoplanet seen, Europa’s salty ocean and first contact’s effect on religion

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 - Located in the Lupus I (the Wolf) cloud, a region of star formation about 400-500 light-years away, a young T-Tauri star may be either a new planet or a failed star. Although the borderline between the two is still a matter of debate, one way to distinguish between them is by their mass. If a new observation of this object holds, GQ Lupi b would thus be the youngest and lightest exoplanet to have been imaged. See article.
g Abodes - Jupiter's moon Europa is thought to be one of the most likely abodes for microscopic life in our solar system. The discovery that Europa most likely has a cold, salty ocean beneath its frozen icy crust has put Europa on the short list of objects in our solar system that astrobiologists would like to study further. See article.
g Life - Book alert: As biological scientists learn more about how terrestrial life was formed, they increasingly turn to the stars to ask whether life might have evolved elsewhere. Thus far, despite a recent flurry of interest in Mars, they have found no solid evidence, but they keep looking. “Life on Other Worlds,” a scholarly book written by a historian at the U.S. Naval Observatory, examines the long development of that quest, along with some of the philosophical questions that have emerged from it. Steven J. Dick notes that our observational abilities are both limited and biased, and that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence forces us to examine some of our own assumptions about what constitutes life in the first place. See article.
g Intelligence - Do extraterrestrial civilizations exist? So far no others have been found, but this has not stopped scientific speculation. While the other planets of our solar system appear to be quite inhospitable, the past 25 years have seen many discussions about the possibilities for alien civilizations on planets around other stars. These discussions have frequently concluded that we are not unique; that there are many, perhaps millions, of other civilizations in our galaxy alone. However, in the last few years there has been a reaction against this belief. There are two independent lines of argument suggesting that there are very few technological civilizations in the galaxy, perhaps only one: our own. See article.
g Message - Scientists find it hard enough to pin down evidence of early life on our own planet. How on Earth do we plan to determine whether life exists elsewhere? See article. Note: This article is from 2004.
g Cosmicus - A test of an inflatable Earth orbiting module is slated for liftoff early next year, bankrolled by a go-it-alone, do-it-yourself entrepreneur keen on providing commercial space habitats for research and manufacturing, among other duties. See article.
g Learning - Here’s a neat teacher info source, courtesy of PBS: “Life on other Worlds: Our Solar System and Beyond.” See article.
g Imagining - Here’s a neat Web site: The Exorarium. At the Exorarium, visitors get a chance to mix and match the same ingredients that brought about human life, shaping their own unique intelligent life forms. For example, you might start with a hot or cool star, a heavy or light planet, one with lots of water or a desert world, and so on – until a unique ecosystem takes shape before your eyes … a family tree leading to the ultimate outcome, a species of intelligent life. See article.
g Aftermath - How will an alien visit influence the world’s religions? Here’s one common man’s view.


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The biological universe, what if nobody is transmitting and ‘Let’s Build an Extraterrestrial’

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 sky survey by Anglo-Australian astronomers has put forward a new calculation for the number of stars in the visible universe. Their estimate is larger than the number of sand grains on Earth. See article. Note: This article is from 2003.
g Abodes - Scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have ended a nine-year debate over whether the Earth's inner core is undergoing changes that can be detected on a human timescale. Their work, which appears in the August 26 issue of the journal Science, measured differences in the time it took seismic waves generated by nearly identical earthquakes up to 35 years apart to travel through the Earth's inner core. See article.
g Life - Book alert: In such special moments as those we are living today, when hardly a few months ago repeated vestiges of extraterrestrial ancient life on Mars have been announced, Steven J. Dick’s “The Biological Universe: The Twentieth-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of the Science” is doubly suitable, not only to update the question of the existence of other living beings in the universe, but also to examine the consequences of all kinds, social, scientific, etc., that the real presence of other creatures would mean for us. This is then a rigorous work, where its author narrates from most viewpoints and with a historical perspective, everything that has to do with extraterrestrial life and the subsequent debate developed throughout this century. See reviews.
g Intelligence - With genome maps adding new appreciation of the very close relationship between humans and the great apes, scientists at the University of California, San Diego have proposed a series of ethical and scientific guidelines for the expected increase in research on these, our closest evolutionary cousins. See article.
g Message - Whenever the director of SETI research presents a public lecture, she can almost guarantee that “What If everybody is listening and nobody is transmitting?” will be one of the questions the audience asks. See article.
g Cosmicus - NASA is sending three astronauts and a Cincinnati doctor to test new space medicine concepts and extravehicular techniques in a unique underwater laboratory off the Florida coast. NASA astronaut Lee Morin leads the crew on an 18-day undersea mission Oct. 3-20 aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Aquarius Underwater Laboratory. See article.
g Learning - Here’s a good introduction to learning about the characteristics of living things is to get the kids brainstorming as to what makes a living thing living: “Glue Critters.” See lesson.
g Imagining - Here’s a neat site that draws upon the history of science fiction for examples: “Let’s Build an Extraterrestrial”.
g Aftermath Epicurus, in the fourth century BC, believed that the universe contained other worlds like our own, and since his time there has been considerable debate whether extraterrestrial life exists and might communicate with us. During the last quarter of the 20th century, an international social movement has emerged which advocates an attempt to achieve communication with extraterrestrial intelligence, CETI, and many of its most active members have been leading scientists. Modest efforts to detect radio signals from intelligent extraterrestrials have already been made, both under government aegis and privately funded, and the technical means for a more vigorous search have been developed. If a CETI project were successful, linguists would suddenly have one or more utterly alien languages to study, and some consideration of linguistic issues is a necessary preparation for it. See article. Note: This article is from 1994.

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