Forces driving star formation and we may not see aliens for centuries

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 – New images from ESA's Planck space observatory reveal the forces driving star formation and give astronomers a way to understand the complex physics that shape the dust and gas in our galaxy. See article.
g Life – A 95 million-year-old fossilized jaw discovered in Texas has been identified as a new genus and species of flying reptile, Aetodactylus halli. See article.
g Intelligence – Whether different odors can be quickly distinguished depends on certain synapses in the brain that inhibit nerve stimulation. See article.
g Message – For more than 80 years, we’ve been sending radio (and eventually television) transmissions into space, allowing anyone in space to hear war reports from London, “I Love Lucy” reruns and our latest election results. So wouldn’t hearing aliens be as simple as turning on the radio? Here’s why not. Note: This article is from 2004.
g Cosmicus – NASA announced eight possible astrobiology missions Wednesday that would closely examine tiny microorganisms and minerals. See article.
g Aftermath – As telescopes become more advanced, we’ll be able to see more details about planets orbiting other stars – including indications that those planets have life. However, it would probably take many centuries before we could actually see the aliens. See article.

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Asteroid with frozen water found and NASA not worried about aliens

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 – Our universe might have originated from a black hole that lies within another universe. See article.
g Abodes – Scientists have found lots of life-essential water — frozen as ice — in an unexpected place in our solar system: an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. See article.
g Life – According to a statistical analysis of the fossil record, dinosaurs were adept at coping with all sorts of environments, and not as restricted in their geographic ranges as previously thought. See article.
g Intelligence – For the first time elephants have been found to produce an alarm call associated with the threat of bees, and have been shown to retreat when a recording of the call is played even when there are no bees around. See article.
g Message – Stephen Hawking created quite a buzz this weekend when he said that contacting extraterrestrial life might be too dangerous for earthlings. In his Discovery Channel documentary, the famed British physicist said that intelligent life forms are almost sure to exist, but contacting them might bee too risky. NASA doesn’t appear to be too worried. See article.
g Cosmicus – Future satellites could deploy solar sails to help take down pieces of space junk floating around Earth and a tiny new spacecraft hopes to make it possible. See article.

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Contaminating Martian life and best places and ways to look for 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 – The oceans remain one of the least explored places on the planet, but new robotic technology could change that. Collecting accurate data concerning the oceans is essential in understanding how events resulting from climate change, such as glacial melt, will effect the future of our planet and biosphere. See article.
g Life – Bacteria common to spacecraft may be able to survive the harsh environs of Mars long enough to inadvertently contaminate Mars with terrestrial life according to research published in the April 2010 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. See article.
g Message – Scientists haven't found E.T. just yet, but they may be pinning down the best places and ways to look for alien life during future space missions, NASA researchers said Wednesday. See article.
g Cosmicus – Physicists have pinpointed the location of a long lost light reflector left on the Moon by the Soviet Union nearly 40 years ago. The reflector could actually help today's scientists measure physical properties of the Moon and phenomena such as tidal distortion. See article.

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Pulsars beaming signals at different octaves and why ETI won't contact us by radio

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 – New observations from a trio of international telescopes have caught enigmatic radio-emitting stars called pulsars beaming out signals across different octaves, revealing more clues into how these fast-spinning stars generate their cosmic lighthouse emissions. See article.
g Abodes – A European-built spacecraft has used its solar wings as sails to skim through the sweltering atmosphere of Venus at the planet's outermost border with space. See article.
g Intelligence – Information processing circuits in digital computers are static. In our brains, information processing circuits - neurons - evolve continuously to solve complex problems. Now, an international research team has created a similar process of circuit evolution in an organic molecular layer that can solve complex problems. This is the first time a brain-like "evolutionary circuit" has been realized. See article.
g Message – Put yourself in the situation of the aliens, out there somewhere in the galaxy. They surmise that Earth looks promising for the emergence of intelligent life one day, but they have no idea when. There would be little point in beaming radio messages in this direction for eons in the vague hope that one day radio technology would be developed here and someone would decide to tune in, says one astrobiologist. See article. Note: this article is from 2004.

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500th cosmic detonation in deep space and help discover 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 Stars – NASA's Swift observatory, keeping watch for the most powerful explosions in the universe, has hit a major milestone after spotting its 500th cosmic detonation in deep space. See article.
g Abodes – Six years ago, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft began orbiting Saturn. Scientists are celebrating the data and detailed images the mission has provided of the planet, its famous ring, and its many moons. See article.
g Message – Want to help SETI discover alien life? If you haven’t already done so, download the free SETI at Home software. Using Internet-connected computers, the program downloads and analyzes radio telescope data on your desktop when it is idle. The program has been so successful in plowing through data that other scientific researchers, especially in medicine, are adopting it to their fields. Click here for the program.


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Hawking advises avoiding aliens and how supervolcanoes shaped life on Earth

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 – Supervolcano eruptions in Earth's past have played a role in shaping the evolution of life by causing mass extinctions. Scientists are now trying to understand what triggered these enormous eruptions and how likely they are to occur again in the future. See article.
g Life – Chemists have determined the structure of an intermediate form of a unique enzyme that participates in some of the most fundamental reactions in biology. See article.
g Message – Recent discussions within the SETI community have thoroughly explored the issue of whether people with access to radio telescopes should send powerful signals to alien civilizations without some process of prior international consultation. In particular, those exchanges have focused on the question of "Active SETI." See editorial. Note: This editorial is from 2005.
g Aftermath – Genius physicist Stephen Hawking thinks that it’s likely that there’s intelligent life in the universe beyond our solar system. And he advises that we should avoid contact with them. See article.

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Numerous dwarf planets and Hubble telescope turns 20

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 – New research indicates that there may be many more dwarf planets similar to Pluto in our solar system than previously thought. Studying these distant objects can help astrobiologists understand the basic properties of our solar system and the effects that dwarf planets might have on other celestial bodies, such as Earth. See article.
g Cosmicus – Hubble telescope , the first space telescope, which revolutionized astronomy and radically changed our understanding of the universe by sending stunning images of distant galaxies, this weekend celebrates the twentieth anniversary of its launch. See article.
g Aftermath – Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence depends as much upon social support for the project as upon appropriate engineering design and upon the actual existence of a nearby extrasolar civilization. The results of a sociological survey of 1,465 American college students provide the first detailed analysis of the social and ideological factors that influence support for CETI, thereby suggesting ways that support might be increased. Linked to the most idealistic goals of the space program, notably interplanetary colonization, enthusiasm for CETI is little affected by attitudes toward technology or militarism. Few sciences or scholarly fields encourage CETI, with the exceptions of anthropology and astronomy. Support is somewhat greater among men than among women, but the sex difference is far less than in attitudes toward space flight in general. Evangelical Protestantism, represented by the "Born Again" movement, strongly discourages support for CETI. Just as exobiology begins with an understanding of terrestrial biology, exosociology on the question of how interstellar contact can be achieved should begin with serious sociological study of factors operating on our own world. See article.

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Exoplanet lacks methane and life that likes liquid asphalt

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 Spitzer telescope has discovered something odd about a distant planet - it lacks methane. The finding is contradictory to what scientists were expecting based on current models. The discovery also brings astronomers one step closer to probing the atmosphere of Earth-like exoplanets. See article.
g Life – A Caribbean lake of liquid asphalt that makes a comfortable home for a unique mix of microorganisms may provide clues to how life could survive in hydrocarbon lakes on Saturn’s moon Titan. See article.
g Cosmicus – With the launch Thursday of the X-37B spacecraft aboard an Atlas V rocket, the U.S. Air Force is taking a page from NASA's space shuttle program. See article.
g Imagining – Could “cloud creatures” exist on alien worlds? Here’s one writer’s speculations.

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Ancestral Eve crystal and astrobiology's cool reception

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 – NASA's recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is returning early images that confirm an unprecedented new capability for scientists to better understand our sun's dynamic processes. These solar activities affect everything on Earth. See article.
g Abodes – An hour-long hailstorm has endangered a huge number of animal species and has disrupted the human traditions. It has been reported that the catastrophe is being attributable to disintegrating comet. See article.
g Life – Scientists are reporting discovery of what may be the "ancestral Eve" crystal that billions of years ago gave life on Earth its curious and exclusive preference for so-called left-handed amino acids. Those building blocks of proteins come in two forms - left- and right-handed - that mirror each other like a pair of hands. See article.
g Learning – New academic disciplines often get cool receptions. Women's Studies and Quantum Mechanics were considered either frivolous or fictional by many when they first appeared in university catalogs. In the late 1930s, the manuscript that Grote Reber wrote describing low-frequency emission from the Milky Way — a pioneering work that broke open the field of radio astronomy — was uniformly rejected by reviewers for the Astrophysical Journal. Fortunately, the editor decided to publish Reber's paper anyway. See article. Note: This article is from 2008.

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What should we call planets beyond our solar system and timeline of volcanic activity on Mars

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 - Through the study of a popular Martian meteorite's age, a University of Houston professor and his team have made significant discoveries about the timeline of volcanic activity on Mars. See article.
g Cosmicus - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter ... the names of planets in our solar system read like a "Who’s Who" of ancient mythology. What should we call the planets we find beyond our solar system? See article.
g Learning - Chief Ray Lonewolf has shared the ancient tales of his Appalachian Nation Cherokee heritage at powwows across the country. And he'll share the stage with a curious partner: NASA. See article.
g Aftermath - As we look toward exploring other worlds, and perhaps even bringing samples back to Earth for testing, astrobiologists have to wonder: Could there be alien pathogens in those samples that will wreak havoc on our world? See article.

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Nine exoplanets discovered and new ways of looking for ET

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 - Astronomers have discovered nine new transiting exoplanets, some of which were found to orbit in the opposite direction as their host stars See article.
g Message - Theoretical physicist and astrobiologist Paul Davies says we need to start searching for it in a whole different way. In his new book, “The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe?”, which appeared on shelves in North America this week, he argues that SETI needs a paradigm shift. Instead of listening for radio messages — which aliens may not be broadcasting, anyway — he thinks we should look elsewhere, even on earth — in rocks, in strange forms of life, and even inside us, in our DNA.
g Cosmicus - Landing a man on the moon was a towering achievement. Now the president has given NASA an even harder job, one with a certain Hollywood quality: sending astronauts to an asteroid, a giant speeding rock, just 15 years from now. 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.

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Titan’s varying atmosphere and what to send ETI when we receive their signal

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 - Two new and independent studies have put Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity to the test like never before. These results, made using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, show Einstein’s theory is still the best game in town. See article.
g Abodes - According to the first ever infrared analysis of the atmosphere of Neptune's moon Triton, summer is in full swing in its southern hemisphere. The European observing team used ESO's Very Large Telescope and discovered carbon monoxide and made the first ground-based detection of methane in Triton's thin atmosphere. These observations revealed that the thin atmosphere varies seasonally, thickening when warmed. See article.
g Life - The search for life on Saturn's moon Titan shows that organisms appear to thrive on far less water than conventional wisdom holds is needed to keep microbes active and alive. See article.
g Message - Could we find alien civilizations by looking for Dyson spheres? See article.
g Cosmicus - Former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, one of the last men to walk on the moon, has nothing good to say about President Barack Obama’s plan to all but ground the Constellation program, which calls for a return to the moon by 2020 and human landings on Mars by the middle of the century. See article.
g Aftermath - Book alert: Science fiction writers have given us many fine novels contemplating humankind's first contact with intelligent extraterrestrials. But our nonfiction world has not thought much about what to do if we are actually faced with this situation. In “Extraterrestrial Intelligence”, Jean Heidmann, chief astronomer at the Paris Observatory (and self-styled bioastronomer), offers a book on the subject that is at once serious and fun. Heidmann's obvious joy in raw speculation - all of it grounded in real science - is contagious. If aliens send us a message from many light years away, for example, how should we respond? Heidmann reviews the protocols established in the SETI Declaration and then offers his own suggestion: send them the entire contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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Genesis 2.0 and what if ETI isn’t transmitting?

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 - Two critical puzzle pieces for life on Mars, separated by 32 years of conjecture and thousands of miles of terrain, are coming together to yield new clues for a "Genesis 2.0" on the Red Planet. See article.
g Message - Whenever the director of SETI research presents a public lecture, she can almost guarantee that “What If everybody is listening and nobody is transmitting?” will be one of the questions the audience asks. See article. Note: This article is from 2005.
g Cosmicus - President Barack Obama boldly predicted Thursday his new plans for space exploration would lead American astronauts on historic, almost fantastic journeys to an asteroid and then to Mars — and in his lifetime — relying on rockets and propulsion still to be imagined and built. See article.
g Aftermath - Book alert: What happens if SETI succeeds? Several dozen experts from the fields of sociology, technology and education consider the social consequences of finding a signal in “Social Implications of the Detection of Extraterrestrial Civilizations,” by John Billingham, Roger Heyns, David Milne and Seth Shostak (editors). Based on workshops held in 1991 and 1992, this is the definitive opus on the likely impact of an extraterrestrial signal. Don't believe all you see on TV, nor what you read in the chat groups: here is reasoned prognostication on what could be the biggest event in human history. See review.

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Drill for Europa’s ice and how far away is 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 - Four billion years ago, the Sun radiated less energy than it does today. Scientists once believed that greenhouse gases must have helped the Earth stay warm during this time. However, new research shows that the large oceans may have simply absorbed more heat. See article.
g Intelligence - How many light-years is it to the nearest alien civilization? See article. Note: This article is from 2001.
g Message - Sorting deliberate signals from a gush of cosmic static requires discernment. It’s somewhat akin to beachcombing: finding the occasional bauble on a shoreline littered with dead seaweed, desiccated crustaceans, and other unappealing, sea-borne dross. See article. Note: This article is from 2003.
g Cosmicus - NASA and the European Space Agency are sending a mission to study Jupiter and its moon Europa in 2020. There may be life in the moon’s ocean, but to find out a mission will have to be able to drill down through the overlying ice shell. See article.

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Geology of Europa and American denialism in science

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 - Does the geology of Europa provide evidence of water there? See article. Note: This article is from 2003.
g Message - Cosmologist Paul Davies from NAI’s ASU team, winner of the 1995 Templeton Prize, believes that SETI’s search for narrow-band radio signals from planets around other stars needs to be broadened to look for other possible signs of life. In his new book, “The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence”, he explores the idea that aliens may be using far more advanced technology than radio to signal the cosmos, such as manipulating pulsars to act as beacons or even neutrino signaling. See article.
g Cosmicus - U.S. defense companies are hopeful that President Barack Obama's plans to use $6 billion over the next five years for space exploration will provide them with fresh revenue. See article.
g Learning - American denialism threatens many areas of scientific progress, including the widespread fear of vaccines and the useless trust placed in the vast majority of dietary supplements quickly come to mind. See article.
g Aftermath - Here’s an interesting book for some astrobiological reading: “After Contact: The Human Response to Extraterrestrial Life” by Albert A. Harrison.

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Defining a planet and how views of ourselves affect our views of 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 - A planet-like object has been found to be orbiting a cold, miniature star called a brown dwarf, calling into question just what it means to be a planet.
See article.
g Message - Fifty years ago today, Frank Drake, then a 29-year-old researcher at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, pointed an 85-foot (26-m) dish at Tau Ceti, a Sun-like star just 12 light-years distant. He'd tuned the receiver to the 21-cm (1420-MHz) — a ubiquitous emission from hydrogen gas that, he reasoned, would be a logical "hailing frequency" for interstellar communication. Drake switched on the dish's amplifier and watched a chart recorder for the tell-tale squiggles that would signal a radio transmission. The modern search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, had begun. See article.
g Cosmicus - President Obama will seek to promote his vision for the nation’s human space flight program on Thursday, just two days after three storied Apollo astronauts — including Neil Armstrong, the first human to walk on the Moon — called the new plans “devastating.” See article.
g Learning - Here’s a cool set of classroom lessons courtesy of NASA: Astroventure, in which students search for and design a habitable planet. See article.
g Aftermath - How will our views about ourselves affect our views about ETI? See article. Note: This article is from 2002.

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Habitable planets around the corner and how life might form in methane seas

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 - Book alert: Are there other planets like the Earth in our galaxy, and if so, do any of them harbor life? These are fundamentally important questions, and as James Kasting describes ”How to Find a Habitable Planet”, scientists are on the verge of being able to answer them.
g Life - Saturn's frigid moon Titan is not a candidate for Earth-like life. But its methane seas are forcing some scientists to wonder if life in the universe might develop in other ways, too. See article.
g Message - The Earth is going silent. Digital television signals delivered by cable and satellite are quickly replacing analog broadcasts and reducing the number and power of radio waves leaking into space. For viewers at home, it means more channels and pictures of unsurpassed clarity. But for scientists seeking signs of advanced civilizations beyond the solar system, this sudden radio silence makes the search fuzzier. See article.
g Aftermath - Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence depends as much upon social support for the project as upon appropriate engineering design and upon the actual existence of a nearby extrasolar civilization. The results of a sociological survey of 1,465 American college students provide the first detailed analysis of the social and ideological factors that influence support for CETI, thereby suggesting ways that support might be increased. Linked to the most idealistic goals of the space program, notably interplanetary colonization, enthusiasm for CETI is little affected by attitudes toward technology or militarism. Few sciences or scholarly fields encourage CETI, with the exceptions of anthropology and astronomy. Support is somewhat greater among men than among women, but the sex difference is far less than in attitudes toward space flight in general. Evangelical Protestantism, represented by the "Born Again" movement, strongly discourages support for CETI. Just as exobiology begins with an understanding of terrestrial biology, exosociology on the question of how interstellar contact can be achieved should begin with serious sociological study of factors operating on our own world. See paper.

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‘The Eerie Silence’ and creatures that survive in poison

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 - Without oxygen, animal life on Earth would not be possible. But Earth's atmosphere wasn't always rich in oxygen. In fact, to early life, oxygen was a deadly poison. So where did the oxygen come from? And how did life survive the crisis that its arrival caused? See article. Note: This article is from 2004.
g Life - In the depths of the Mediterranean Sea, a team of researchers has discovered the first animals that live their entire lives without oxygen. Instead, the animals thrive in an environment surrounded by “poisonous” sulfides. Previously, only microbes and viruses were thought to be active in such environments. See article.
g Message - Why have we not made contact with aliens after so many years searching the depths of space? “The Eerie Silence”, a new book by SETI researcher Paul Davies, provides a fresh and thoughtful look at this question. See article.
g Learning - The Life in the Universe curriculum is a unique set of resources, for elementary and middle school teachers, designed to bring the excitement of searching for life beyond Earth into the classroom. The SETI Institute, with funding from NSF and NASA, developed these award winning classroom materials with a team of educators, curriculum developers, and scientists. The Life in the Universe curriculum explores many facets of how scientists are trying to answer the questions: Where did life come from? What is its future? Are we alone?

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Hollywood creates aliens in man’s image and NASA’s big 21 ongoing missions

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 - Astronomers have observed a planet-like object orbiting a brown dwarf. However, the object is thought to have formed in less than 1 million years, which is much faster than the predicted time it takes to build a planet. The finding could alter our theories about planet formation. See article.
g Intelligence - Watching a curvaceous woman can feel like a reward in the brain of men, much as drinking alcohol or taking drugs might, research now reveals. See article.
g Cosmicus - While NASA's 2011 budget got a lot of attention for what it cut - the Constellation program mostly - it does include funding for a ton of other critical satellite and robotic missions. These missions include a huge planned mission to Mars as well as other operations that will send spacecraft to Pluto, Jupiter, Mercury, Pluto and the Sun. New climate change research and observation satellites are also heavily funded. Here we take a look at 21 new or ongoing missions NASA will be hot on this year and in the near future. See article.
g Imagining - According to Genesis 1:27, "God created man in His own image." OK, but what about all the other intelligent, cosmic inhabitants? Well, Hollywood has taken care of that. It has created aliens in man's image. See article.
g Aftermath - Book alert: Despite an evidently open-minded attitude, Barry Parker delivers the hard line to ET enthusiasts in “Alien Life: The Search for Extraterrestrials and Beyond": "Strangely, we haven't found a single sign of life beyond our solar system." The emeritus Idaho State University professor of astronomy and physics summarizes recent scientific conjecture on extraterrestrial life without venturing much personal speculation. He considers the "architecture of life" and the mystery of DNA as related to its possible exploitation elsewhere; the possibility of non-carbon-based life forms; the history of Mars exploration (including the recent "meteorite from Mars" discovery); the results of NASA space probes; the discovery of distant planets through advanced telescopy; and the SETI program's search for alien radio signals. Parker acknowledges the contentions of UFO believers, but devotes few pages to claims of alien encounters such as the well-known Roswell incident. Steering clear of that controversy as "an argument not likely to be resolved in the near future," Parker's hopeful and energetic book ends up reinforcing the science establishment's lonely outlook for humanity, but still leaves room for the possibility that if they are out there, we will find them, or they, us. See article.

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Weird ways to look for ETI and elastic galaxy

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 - Hubble has snapped an amazing new photo of a peculiar galaxy caught in the middle of two other galaxies that appear to be stretching it out. See article.
g Abodes - Astrobiology Magazine's climate blog, the Hot Zone, discusses the ways in which life can impact the physical conditions of the Earth. A recent study shows that the health of a single microbial species in the Earth's oceans could eventually alter the ocean food chain - and possibly the Earth's biosphere as a whole. See article.
g Message - Why does SETI use technology other than radio to listen for alien signals? See article.
g Cosmicus - Researchers have developed a way to use body parts as touchpads for small electronic devices. The lightweight technology could have applications for users of small gadgets like smart phones. It could also be useful for space explorers on missions where payload space for equipment is extremely limited. See article.

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Searching for ETI in the 21st century and future mission to Europa

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 - According to a new study, thousands of Tunguska-sized comet fragments may have struck the Earth 13,000 years ago, causing dramatic cooling in just one hour. The study points out how extraterrestrial events can cause catastrophic changes in the Earth's climate and biosphere. See article.
g Message - Book alert: In “Are We Alone in the Cosmos? The Search for Alien Contact in the New Millenium”, edited by Byron Preiss and Ben Bova, major scientists involved in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, explain their work and reveal their thoughts. Joining them are some of the best speculative thinkers, from Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov to Gregory Benford, who address the major philosophical questions involved.
g Cosmicus - The NASA-funded ENDURANCE project has completed its second field season robotically exploring the waters of an ice-covered lake in Antarctica. Insight gained by the expedition will help scientists prepare for a future mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa. See article.

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Star’s mysterious dark companion and how scientists will knowing they’ve heard 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 Stars - Astronomers have been given a glimpse of a "mysterious dark companion" in a distant solar system that has baffled fellow stargazers for nearly 200 years. See article.
g Abodes - Carl Sagan said that the weak rays of our Sun during Earth's early years should have created a planet ensconced in ice. Yet somehow Earth's temperature's been mostly constant, and above freezing. Now two Danish scientists think they know why. See article.
g Life - The enormous dragonflies, millipedes and other insects that lived 300 million years ago grew so large because of Earth's rich oxygen supply at the time. See article. Note: This article is from 2006.
g Message - How can scientists be sure they’ve picked up a signal from ETI, and not just the cosmic gurgle of a completely natural object? See article. Note: This article is from 2003.
g Cosmicus - Some travel agents have smartly reorganized their operations around Virgin Galactic's new plan to blast tourists into space from a rocket launch pad in New Mexico. See article.
g Learning - Here’s a neat classroom activity courtesy of NASA: “Measuring meteorological data from Mars”. Students compare real-time Earth and Mars weather measurements for temperature, wind speed, humidity and atmospheric pressure by accessing Internet-data resources from NASA.
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What happens after a major asteroid hits Earth and forensic alien anthropology

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 - This year marks the 20th anniversary of a photograph. It's a very dramatic photo, even though, at first glance, it's mostly dark and seems to show nothing at all. But if you look closely, you can see a tiny speck of light. That speck is the Earth, seen from very, very, very far away. See article.
g Cosmicus - Do we have a plan in place if a major asteroid collision were to occur, or would the few humans who survived be left wandering a bereft, Cormac McCarthy–esque landscape of bleak terror? See article.
g Aftermath - How might explorers determine what happened to an extinct alien race based on the clues they left behind on their home planet? See article.

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A short introduction to planetary formation and no alien signal on Jan. 15, 2008

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 - Here’s a short introduction to planetary formation with the emphasis on organic chemistry, astrobiology, and the origins of life. See article.
g Life - Scientists have discovered a 95-million-year-old amber deposit - the first of its kind found in Africa. The amber and the organisms encased inside are providing a wealth of information about the evolution of life during the age of the dinosaurs. See article.
g Message - A news story from television station KTVU, Oakland, Calif., that appeared on the internet on Jan. 15, 2008, has led some to believe that a credible radio signal from space may have been recently detected - a signal that might be ascribable to extraterrestrial intelligence. That’s not quite the case. See article.
g Imagining - Book alert: “The Biology of Star Trek” examines the plausibility of the more famous “Star Trek” aliens.

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Searching for extraterrestrial technologies within our solar system for and cyborgs vs. man in space

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 - About 13,000 years ago the Earth was struck by thousands of Tunguska-sized cometary fragments over the course of an hour, leading to a dramatic cooling of the planet, according to new research. See article.
g Message - Humanity might want to consider searching for extraterrestrial technologies within our solar system. See paper.
g Cosmicus - Who should explore space: robots or humans? Our ability to travel beyond Earth is hampered by the harsh conditions of space, but rather than let robots have all the fun, could cyborg technology allow humans to make greater strides into the final frontier? See article.
g Learning - Here’s a neat classroom activity courtesy of NASA: Planet Paths. This activity is designed to help middle school students understand that planets travel in nearly circular orbits around the sun and that planetary motion obeys laws defined by Kepler and Newton.

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ETI’s challenge to our terrestrial egotism and NASA astronauts go sci-fi

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 - A Russian team is close to reaching Lake Vostok, the largest body of freshwater on the continent and the fourth largest lake, in terms of volume, on the planet – and a place where life is abundant. See article.
g Learning - Astronauts often aim for the stars, but it's rare that they get to play them. Will these posters help get kids interested in astronomy and the sciences? See article.
g Aftermath - If some day we detect a radio signal from a distant civilization, well have to make some adjustments in the way we view ourselves. After millennia knowing of no other intelligence in the universe than humankind, we could face a considerable challenge to our terrestrial egotism. See article. Note: This article is from 2000.

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Could ETI pick up our TV/radio signals and Earth analog for Europa

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 - Extraordinarily rare springs high above the rest of the world in the Arctic could serve as Earth's own little version of Europa, helping scientists picture what life might face on the mysterious Jovian moon. See article.
g Message - If the best of our SETI setups were suddenly transported lock, stock, and spectrum analyzer to some star system a few tens of light-years away and turned our way by snoopy aliens, would it be sensitive enough to detect any of our terrestrial transmissions? Could it successfully eavesdrop on our television, radio, radar, or cell phones? See article. Note: This article is from 2008.
g Cosmicus - The sound barrier was first broken by an aircraft in 1947, but this year a man will attempt to break the sound barrier with his body alone. His freefall jump from the edge of space will not only break records, but could contribute valuable information about human physiology for future space missions. See article.
g Learning - Provided by "Ask the Astronomer" program at Cornell University, The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence and Life in the Universe Web site answers questions and provides information about extraterrestrial life. Additional links are available.
g Imagining - The movie "Ghosts of Mars" has about as much to do with the Red Planet as "Jurassic Park" has to do with Central America. Which is to say, very little. See article. Note: This article is from 2001.
g Aftermath - Let’s presume we have detected an extraterrestrial intelligence. We cannot tell for sure if the message was intended for us, or what it means. What should we do? Note: This article is from 1999.

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Witnessing the birth a solar system and how realistic is ‘Contact’?

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 - For the past 12,000 years, the Earth's climate has been relatively stable and hospitable. That time - the Halocene epoch - may be coming to an end as a new period in geologic history begins. Welcome to the Anthropocene - the "human epoch". See article.
g Intelligence - How did some primates evolve into human beings? See article.
g Message - Just how realistic was the penultimate astrobiology movie, “Contact”? See reviews and discussion.
g Cosmicus - Telescopes and probes send us images of stars flickering in and out of existence on a somewhat frequent basis. But Hubble has delivered something rare to the human eye: the birth of an actual solar system. See article.
g Imagining - Science fiction authors produce a lot of very strange critters. In the desperate dash to be different, many go way overboard to invent fantastic, outlandish species unlike anything anyone has ever seen. It’s an admirable expression of their artistic abilities, but there’s an inherent problem: they almost always lose the reader along the way. Sure, it sounds ultra-cool to have a whole herd of 80-foot quasi-limbed orb-stasis beings, but unless you draw me a picture of these things, the reader often has no idea what you’re talking about. However, if you write that your alien has four wings, 10 eyes and looks a little like a kangaroo, the reader is right there with you. Most readers need at least something familiar to draw on for their imagination, or they get lost. See article.

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Composing messages meant for alien eyes and Earth entering new age of geological time

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 - Geologists from the University of Leicester are among four scientists - including a Nobel prize-winner - who suggest that Earth has entered a new age of geological time. See article.
g Life - How do species modify their phenotypes in ways that permit them to succeed in their environment? See article. Note: This article is from 2009.
g Intelligence - Early human ancestors and chimpanzee ancestors may have mated and produced offspring, according to a new DNA study. See article. Note: This article is from 2006.
g Message - SETI experiments generally look for what are politely termed "narrow-band signals." In other words, the receivers at the back ends of our radio telescopes search wide swaths of the spectrum looking for a signal that's at one spot on the dial — a signal that's very constrained in frequency. By putting all the transmitted power into this small bandwidth, the aliens can ensure that their signal will stand out. See article. Note: This article is from 2008.
g Cosmicus - The Large Hadron Collider in Geneva succeeded early Tuesday in colliding subatomic particles at three times the highest energy levels previously recorded. See article.
g Learning - Are you a future SETI scientist? See article. Note: This article is from Feb. 2001.
g Aftermath - Scientists are studying the best ways to compose messages meant for alien eyes in case we ever do get the chance to communicate with extraterrestrials. See article.

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The wobble method and explaining the universe with five numbers

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 universe can be explained with five numbers, a cosmologist says. See article.
g Abodes - What is the "wobble method” that’s used to find extrasolar planets? See article.
g Life - Blindsnakes are one of the few groups of organisms that inhabited Madagascar when it broke from India about 100 million years ago and are still living today, researchers say. See article.
g Message - Quote of the Day: “(The Drake Equation is ) … a way of organizing the search that actually gives us some insights into what we know.” – Frank Drake
g Cosmicus - Scientists once believed that the Moon was one of the driest places in the solar system. Now we know that water exists on the Moon in a variety of concentrations and geologic settings. This moonwater could be a vital resource for future missions. See article.
g Learning - After thousands of years of speculation about our role in the universe, it has now become possible, with the use of 21st century technology, to understand the fundamentals of our existence and, perhaps, the existence of other life-forms beyond the confines of Earth. See article.

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