Friday, November 16, 2012

Detecting colors – and life – on alien worlds

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 - Observations of a young star with a mass similar to that of the Sun show a giant gap inside its protoplanetary disk. The gravitational force of newborn planets may account for the huge gap. See article.
g Abodes - When direct detection of Earth-like planets becomes possible, scientists want to be able to easily characterize these planets and see which ones might be suitable for alien life. A new technique shows how the unique colors of particular environments known to harbor extremophile life on Earth can be detected remotely. See article.
g Message - Here’s a prerecorded Web cast at Aricebo Radio Observatory in March 2003 when scientists listened to the most promising transmissions from UC Berkeley’s SETI@home search. Join the Exploratorium’s Ron Hipschman and special guest Dan Werthimer, chief scientist and principal investigator for the SETI Institute’s efforts, as they also discuss Arecibo Observatory’s search of artificial radio signals coming from other stars here; scroll to “What about Intelligent Life?”

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