Mourning SETI’s shut down and commercial spaceflight craft passes key test

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 - A spiral galaxy with a dramatic lopsided shape is featured in contrasting views from two telescopes. See article.
g Abodes - Pumice, the rock used remove dry skin from feet, could have been responsible for the birth of life on Earth, scientists have claimed. See article.
g Life - Rice originated in China, a team of genome researchers has concluded in a study tracing back thousands of years of evolutionary history through large-scale gene re-sequencing. Their findings, which appear in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), indicate that domesticated rice may have first appeared as far back as approximately 9,000 years ago in the Yangtze Valley of China. Previous research suggested domesticated rice may have two points of origin -- India as well as China. See article.
g Message - I understand priorities must be set and all spending must be looked at with a critical eye. Still, it is a bit sad that the giant array of radio telescopes in California that are used to search for extraterrestrial life have been closed due to lack of funding. It’s like we’re saying, “ET, we’ve been disconnected. Don’t bother to phone.” See article.
g Cosmicus - A private spaceship built to carry space tourists on suborbital flights for the company Virgin Galactic passed a major glide test flight while flying over California's Mojave Desert on May 4: The spacecraft tested out the novel system it will use when re-entering Earth's atmosphere. See article.
g Learning - Book alert: You may have to really scour used book stores for this one: 1976’s “ETI: The First Encounter” considers the consequences to man's view of himself and his world of the first proven contact — when it comes — with beings from another planet. Edited by James L. Christian, this book led the way in reflecting on the next stage in man's gradual self-discovery. See the table of contents and ISBN number.
g Aftermath - As SETI's scientists plan for their first contact with other worlds, who better to consult with than anthropologists, who specialize in encounters with exotic cultures? And thus, over the past several years the SETI Institute has repeatedly brought together anthropologists and scholars from other disciplines, in an attempt to bridge the gap between humans and extraterrestrials. See article.

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