Deep drilling on Mars, mental time travel and killer electrons

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 storm of billowing clouds blown by the winds from massive stars, and set aglow by their light, is the focus of a striking image released by Gemini Observatory. See article.
g Abodes - The more scientists have learned about Mars in recent years, the more some believe that finding life might involve a deep drilling project. See article.
g Life - Trees in the Amazon tropical forests are old. Really old, in fact, which comes as a surprise to a team of American and Brazilian researchers studying tree growth in the world’s largest tropical region. See article.
g Intelligence - Neuroscientists at Princeton University have developed a new way of tracking people's mental state as they think back to previous events -- a process that has been described as "mental time travel." See article.
g Message - What are the chances that an alien signal has been sent our way just at the right moment to splash upon our antennas during that brief interval? If the extraterrestrials beam their broadcasts to the whole galaxy (or at least a big chunk of it), the chances are 100 percent. See article.
g Cosmicus - The European Space Agency's Cluster mission has revealed a new creation mechanism of 'killer electrons' - highly energetic electrons that are responsible for damaging satellites and posing a serious hazard to astronauts. Over the past five years, a series of discoveries by the multi-spacecraft Cluster mission have significantly enhanced our knowledge of how, where and under which conditions these killer electrons are created in Earth's magnetosphere. See article.
g Learning - Here’s a neat new set of afterschool activities for elementary school students: “Astrobiology.” This new resource guide from the American Museum of Natural History brings astrobiology activities to the afterschool arena. As part of an 18-month project, AMNH collected NASA materials originally developed for the formal education setting, and adapted them for use in afterschool programs for participants aged 5-12. Members of NAI's NASA Ames Research Center Lead Team served as science advisors to the guide. See guide.
g Imagining - You've seen them on the screen - now see them up-close, behind plexiglass. They're all your favorite aliens – including the Alien Queen - stacked up and labeled for your viewing pleasure. See this podcast of the SETI Institute “Are We Alone?” program.
g Aftermath - As we look toward exploring other worlds, and perhaps even bringing samples back to Earth for testing, astrobiologists have to wonder: could there be alien pathogens in those samples that will wreak havoc on our world? See article.

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