Tuesday, December 08, 2009

First commercial suborbital spaceship up close and linguistic issues of contact with ETI

Welcome! "Alien Life" tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. Here's today's news:
g Abodes - NASA's Dawn spacecraft is making progress through the solar system toward the dwarf planets Vesta and Ceres. By studying these mysterious worlds, Dawn will unlock secrets about the formation of the solar system. The information will help astrobiologists understand how Earth became a habitable world for life as we know it. See article.
g Message - Phoning home intergalactically may have one natural prerequisite if a civilization is hoping to connect: timing their precursor signal or 'ring' so that we might know that they're broadcasting. Dr. Robin Corbet, of the Universities' Space Research Association, discusses his research findings on Synchronized SETI here. Note: This article is from 2002.
g Cosmicus - Hundreds of paying space tourists and travel agents, rocket geeks and glitterati have gathered in the California desert town of Mojave to see what's likely to be the first commercial suborbital spaceship up close. See article.
g Aftermath - Epicurus, in the fourth century BC, believed that the universe contained other worlds like our own, and since his time there has been considerable debate whether extraterrestrial life exists and might communicate with us. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, an international social movement — Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence — has emerged which advocates an attempt to achieve communication with extraterrestrial intelligence, and many of its most active members have been leading scientists. Modest efforts to detect radio signals from intelligent extraterrestrials already have been made, both under government aegis and privately funded, and the technical means for a more vigorous search have been developed. If a CETI project were successful, linguists would suddenly have one or more utterly alien languages to study, and some consideration of linguistic issues is a necessary preparation for it. See article.

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