Life on Mars and the AstroBiology Explorer

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 of the G-type star Eta Boo?
g Abodes -Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, acclaimed astrobiologist from Cardiff University,Wales said the discovery of water on planet Mars combined with other discoveries point to the existence of life on the planet. See article.
g Life - Scientists have discovered how insects can use a bubble of air as an 'external lung' to breathe underwater. The study highlights a unique way in which organisms on Earth have evolved in response to their environment. See article.
g Message -A pioneer of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has warned that for any intelligent aliens trying to search for us, "the Earth is going to disappear" very soon. Frank Drake's point, made at a SETI workshop at Harvard University, is that television services are increasingly being delivered by technologies that do not leak radio frequencies into space. But he added that in some ways the observation is good news for SETI, as it means that the failure of Earth-based observers to detect aliens so far may be less worrisome than it would otherwise seem. See article. Note: This article is from 2004.
g Cosmicus -What is the AstroBiology Explorer (ABE)? See article.
g Aftermath - How will major world religions be affected by the reception ofradio transmissions from an extraterrestrial intelligence? Here’s an interesting project that posits some possible scenarios.