Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Habitable zone for Wolf 359 and Titan’s underground ocean

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 - What is the habitable zone for the nearby star Wolf 359? See article.
g Abodes - NASA's Cassini spacecraft has discovered evidence that points to the existence of an underground ocean of water and ammonia on Saturn's moon Titan. The findings made using radar measurements of Titan's rotation appeared in the March 21 issue of the journal Science. See article.
g Message - Researchers writing in an issue of Nature from a couple of years ago argue that radio signals are not the most efficient way of alerting an extraterrestrial intelligence to our existence — and that anyone out there who is trying to send out a similar message is likely to have reached the same conclusion. Here’s a downloadable NPR report on the conclusions. Note: The radio report is from 2004.
g Imagining - Here are 10 alleged alien encounters — those brushes with aliens (or supposed aliens) that have been definitively debunked over the years. See article.

No comments: