First photo of an extrasolar planet and new head of NASA astrobiology

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 Abodes -Astronomers have released the first picture of a potential extrasolar planet that orbits a sun-like star. The newly-imaged planet may alter our understanding of planetary formation. See article.
g Message -The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations. See article.
g Cosmicus -Dr. Mary A. Voytek, a microbiologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va., took charge of NASA's Astrobiology Program effective Monday as Interim Senior Scientist for Astrobiology in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA HQ. See article.
g Learning - "It's just a video game!" I hear you say. Well, sure, it is. And "Star Trek" was just a television show, too. See article.
g Aftermath - Book alert: As many Earthlings already know —including more than 2 million computer users with firsthand experience — our best hope for finding extraterrestrial intelligence might just lie with an ingenious little screensaver. So it's not surprising that “Beyond Contact: A Guide to SETI and Communicating with Alien Civilizations” (by Brian S. McConnell), an introduction to searching for and communicating with intelligent life, begins with some of the details behind UC Berkeley's groundbreaking, massively distributed SETI@home project, which processes intergalactic noise for pennies on the teraflop. But that's just the start of the story. Inventor and software developer Brian McConnell continues with an overview of whether and why we might find something out there, who's doing what to look for it (including the folks at Berkeley), and — once some ET picks up on the other end — what we might say and how we might say it. This last problem, which occupies the final half of the book, proves to be the most thought provoking, and McConnell has put together a methodical, nuts-and-bolts walkthrough of both the challenges involved and how binary code might be enlisted to solve them. See reviews.