Sunday, November 09, 2008

How SETI is transforming society and China to the Moon by 2012

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 Life - Biomarkers that were once thought to be the oldest evidence for complex life may not be as old as scientists once believed. The finding could change our understanding of the timescales in which life evolved on Earth. See article.
g Message -Among the most important SETI work is being done at Harvard University. The Harvard SETI home page discusses the Radio Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, The Arecibo Search for Early Hydrogen and Optical SETI.
g Cosmicus -China aims to put an unmanned buggy on the moon by 2012, local media reported on Friday, laying the ground for its greater ambitions of putting a man on the moon. See article.
g Imagining -For anyone who has watched the recent incarnations of Star Trek, one question must present itself: do the majority of alien beings in the cosmos really just look like Earthlings, only with bonier faces or pointier ears? Is that it? Because, aside from the occasional intangible space entity, most “way-out” life forms are remarkably similar to us. Even the weirder images of the little green (or grey) aliens in popular culture are pretty unimaginative. Two arms? Check. Two legs? Check. A head, some eyes, an upright posture? Yes, please. This is not the cutting edge of science fiction, more our own narcissistic reflection dropping in via spacecraft. Surely we can aspire to thinking something a little more& alien? See article.
g Aftermath - The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence cannot guarantee success in a trivial, superficial sense (that is in the form of the discovery of an alien civilization). But at its deeper levels SETI certainly stimulates and influences our thoughts and transforms our society in profound ways. See article.

Honoring the Past, Inspiring the Future

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