Sunday, November 23, 2008

Mars’ ancient ocean and ‘Aliens and Linguists’

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 - Hubble's iconic images include many shots of cosmic clouds of gas and dust called nebulae. For example, the famous "Pillars of Creation" mark the birthplace of new stars within the Eagle Nebula. Yet despite their beauty, visible-light images show only the nebulae surfaces. Baby stars may hide beneath, invisible even to Hubble's powerful gaze. See article.
g Abodes - Gamma-ray data from NASA's Mars Odyssey indicates that an ocean once covered one third of Mars' surface. If liquid water was indeed present, Mars might have been habitable for life in its past. See article.
g Message - Using a conservative approach to interstellar travel that intelligent extraterrestrials may be present in our solar system, living in world ships that have colonized cometary or asteroidal objects during the last billion years. The originating star systems for these advanced beings could be solar-type stars that fortuitously approach our Sun within a light year or so at intervals of about a million years or nearby stars that have left the main sequence, prompting interstellar migration. If we are indeed within such a "Dyson Sphere" of artificial worldlets, we could detect their presence through astronomical means since a space habitat will emit more infrared radiation than a like-sized comet or asteroid. See article.
g Cosmicus - Researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center have identified a set of key immune-response genes that do not turn on in a weightless environment. The discovery is another clue in the effort to solve an almost 40-year-old mystery: why the human immune system does not function well in the weightlessness of space. See article.
g Imagining - Book alert: Here’s an oldie worth finding in a used bookstore: Walter E. Meyers’ “Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction.” It examines how science fiction treats aliens using languages, aptly pointing out fallacies and offering some intriguing speculations. See reviews.

Honoring the Past, Inspiring the Future

3 comments:

Atrueoriginall said...

You can delete this after you read it.

Ya know what...I was taking some of your titles and splitting them up since they fit better in two different categories on my blogs. Then I noticed that when I do that, they do not show up 'here' as "links to this post". They do link here though.

As well, I have one that is a photo which is meant to click (Mars glaciers) and it links to your post. It also doesn't show up to "links to this post". Just so ya know, they're in there, they're just not being recorded in here is all but they're clickin just the same.

Eileen (Atrueoriginall)

Rob Bignell said...

Thanks for the links to my blog, Atrueoriginal. You may be interested in UFO articles I wrote about sightings in Wisconsin and Iowa. See the "Wisconsin UFO Reports" Web site.

Atrueoriginall said...

I have the site on my link list so I'll keep an eye on any new listings occasionally. I wish Blogger would accept website links for the blog roll but 'no go'.

It's funny but I remember doing an article that had something to do with Wisconsin some time ago. Okay, I went and looked for it shy of it driving me batty. Don't be confused by the other screen name, that's me too.

I remembered something about it when I saw your logo yesterday.

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