Thursday, March 24, 2011

Radio waves over laser beams and striking images and maps of Moon

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 has released the final set of data from the exploration phase of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter along with the first measurements from its new life as a science satellite. The data includes striking images and maps that will help scientists study our nearest celestial neighbor. See article.
g Life - A team of researchers has discovered that pollen, the organ that contains the plant male gametes, communicate with the pistil, their female counterpart, using a mechanism commonly observed in the nervous system of animals. This study not only reveals a new mechanism which underlies reproduction in plants, but also opens an exciting new avenue in the study of how cell-cell communication is conserved between animals and plants. See article.
g Intelligence - A researcher compared the brain activity of people who can see and people who were born blind, and discovered that the part of the brain that normally works with our eyes to process vision and space perception can actually rewire itself to process sound information instead. See article.
g Message - While advanced civilizations might be tempted to use optical means such as lasers to send information between the stars, there are some good reasons that nearly all the major Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence experiments are looking for radio waves instead. See article. This article is from 1996.

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1 comment:

Chris said...

Very interesting. I wonder if someone can learn how to concentrate, and devote all of their brain's processing power to one task or sense?