Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Rocky worlds around Alpha Centauri and moon return dropped

Welcome! "Alien Life" tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. Here's today's news:
g Stars - The Alpha Centauri dual star system is thought to host rocky Earth-mass worlds, but this assumes they could form in the turbulent conditions associated with the opposing gravitational tugs of paired star systems. See article.
g Abodes - Differences in the number and speed of cometary impacts onto Jupiter's large moons Ganymede and Callisto some 3.8 billion years ago can explain their vastly different surfaces and interior states. See article.
g Life - It’s a question as common as brown dogs: will alien life be carbon-based? See article. Note: This article is from 2004.
g Message - The SETI Institute predicts that we'll detect an extraterrestrial transmission within 20 years. If that turns out to be true, it'll probably be the folks at UC Berkeley's Hat Creek radio observatory who will have heard the call. See article. Note: This article is from 2004.
g Cosmicus - President Barack Obama's proposed budget gives NASA a $6 billion 5-year boost but aborts early attempts to return to the moon and turns over space transportation to commercial companies. See article.
g Learning - While we yearn to walk on other worlds, SETI Institute scientist Cynthia Phillips strolls the surfaces of distant planets each day at her computer. She’s a planetary geologist on a quest to understand how liquids change the surfaces of other worlds. See article. Note: This article is from 2008.
g Imagining - Not so long ago, putative extraterrestrials were the color of moss. Generic space aliens were inevitably described as Little Green Men, probably because an avocado complexion is dramatically unlike any human skin tint. See article. Note: This article is from 2004.
g Aftermath - What would an intelligent signal from another planet change about human destiny? This large question is the topic of the book "The SETI Factor" by Frank White, who also analyzes how to announce such an historic finding and whether it would unite or divide nations. Note: This article is from 2003.


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