Baby triceratops skull, portrait of humanity and Project Orion

Welcome! “Alien Life” tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. You may notice that this and future entries are shorter than usual; Career, family and book deal commitments have forced me to cut back some of my projects. Now, here’s today’s news:
g Stars - Northeastern University researchers Pran Nath, Daniel Feldman and Zuowei Liu have shown that the discovery of a proposed particle, dubbed the Stueckelberg Z prime, is possible utilizing the data being collected in the CDF and DO experiments at the Fermilab Tevatron. The Stueckelberg Z prime particle is so narrow that questions had been raised as to whether or not it could be detected. See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060730134836.htm.
g Abodes - The European Space Agency's spacecraft constellation Cluster has hit the magnetic bull's-eye. The four spacecraft surrounded a region within which the Earth’s magnetic field was spontaneously reconfiguring itself. See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060719090129.htm.
g Life - A Montana State University student unearthed the skull of a baby Triceratops last week near Jordan. See http://www.livescience.
com/animalworld/060722_ap_baby_triceratops.html.
g Intelligence - Using a retina plucked from the eye of guinea pigs as a model, scientists estimate that our eyes transmit visual information to our brains at about the same rate as an Ethernet connection. See http://www.livescience.com/technology/060727_eye_ethernet.html.
g Message - A “portrait of humanity” recently was taken by Simon Bell, a photographer from Toronto. It is half of a stereo pair, two images that when properly focused together, reveal the scene’s third dimension. The photograph was envisioned as part of a message for the Cassini mission to Saturn and its moon Titan, launched in late 1997. It would have been an artifact in the tradition of the Voyager Record and the “Visions of Mars” CD ROM. Unlike the Voyager Record it was not intended to leave the solar system to be found by the crew of an advanced starship. Unlike Visions it was not for humans in the next few centuries. Its fate would have been to remain on the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan, waiting for eons of time against the slim chance that life might someday appear on that strange world, or that some other space traveler might visit Titan and find it. The image, inscribed on a diamond wafer about the size of a coin, was intended to show an intelligent alien on Titan viewer a little about our bodies, about our relationships with each other, and about our planet. See http://contactincontext.org/cic/v2i1/portrait.pdf. For related story, see “How the world watched Huygens probe descend” at http://www.spaceflightnow.com/cassini/060729huygens.html.
g Cosmicus - Thirty-seven years ago, Project Apollo put the first humans on the surface of the Moon. The next time the U.S. launches its astronauts to Earth's natural satellite, they will do so as part of Project Orion, collectSPACE.com has learned. See http://www.space.com/news/060720_cev_orion.html.
g Learning - Here’s a neat classroom activity courtesy of NASA: Who Can Live Here? Students explore the limits of life on Earth to extend their beliefs about life to include its possibility on other worlds. See http://btc.montana.edu/ceres/html/ExtremeEnvironment/Extreme.
htm.
g Imagining - Like first contact stories? Then be sure to read Hal Clement’s novel “Mission Of Gravity,” published by Doubleday in 1954.
g Aftermath - The scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence is accelerating its pace and adopting fresh strategies. This increases the likelihood of successful detection in the near future. Humanity's first contact with alien intelligence will trigger extraordinary attention from the media, from government authorities, and from the general public. By improving our readiness for contact, especially for security during the first 30 days, we can avoid the most negative scenarios — and also enhance humanity's benefits from this first contact with an alien intelligence. Six potential problem areas include communicating with the media and the public, communicating with scientific colleagues, government control, an assassin or saboteur, well-meaning officials and lawsuits. See http://ieti.org/articles/security.htm.