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 - A stellar prodigy has been spotted about 450 light-years away in a system called UX Tau A by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Astronomers suspect this system’s central sun-like star, which is just one million years old, may already be surrounded by young planets. Scientists hope the finding will provide insight into when planets began to form in our own solar system. See article.
g Abodes - Venus is the morning star and the evening star, the planet with the most romantic name. In size and shape, it's the place most like Earth. But up close, it's a nasty corner of the solar system ‑ brutally hot and lifeless, surrounded by clouds of sulfuric acid, its atmosphere oppressively dense. See article.
g Life - Web-making spiders employ a host of silk glands to synthesize a variety of silk filaments with different mechanical properties. Although it is widely believed that the aciniform glands are one such silk factory, there has been no hard evidence linking aciniform-derived proteins and silk - until now. See article.
g Message - Should we modify the Drake Equation to account for civilizations which actually engage in deliberate interstellar transmission? See article.
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.
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