Thursday, July 14, 2011

Origin of microbialites and changing how signals are sent 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 - New research shows that volcanoes and earthquakes can move ancient Earth rock foundations more than 1,000 miles. See article.
g Life - Microbialites, strange carbonate structures that line the bottom of Pavilion Lake in British Columbia, Canada, come in many shapes and sizes. No-one knows why. But scientists in the Pavilion Lake Research Project hope to learn more by studying nearby Kelly Lake and making some comparisons. See article.
g Message - Recent advances in wireless computing technology could improve deep-space missions like asteroid research and remote spacecraft operations by changing the way signals are sent from Earth. A new method designed to effectively deliver commands and instructions using hundreds of millions of tiny transmitters linked together could also free the giant satellite dishes currently used to send and receive the long-range information for other applications. A research paper describing the scheme for relatively simple high-power transmitters will be published in the October issue of Radio Science, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. See article.

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