Saturday, December 22, 2012

Evolution of life’s ‘software’

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 - High-speed video is helping scientists understand how meteorites transfer the energy of impact to sand and dirt grains. See article.
g Life - A new approach to the question of life's origin focuses not on the chemical “hardware” of life, but instead the “software” or information content. See article.
g Message - In popular fiction and conspiracy theories, life forms, especially intelligent life forms, that are of extraterrestrial origin, - i.e. not coming from the Earth - are referred to as alien and collectively as aliens. Prime examples of how aliens are viewed are found in the movies Alien, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Signs, Independence Day, and The War of the Worlds. This usage is clearly anthropocentric: When humans in fictional accounts accomplish interstellar travel and land on a planet elsewhere in the universe, the local inhabitants of these other planets are usually still referred to as "alien," even though they are the native life form and the humans are the intruders. In general they are seen as unfriendly life forms. This may be seen as a reversion to the classic meaning of "alien" as referring to "other," in contrast to "us" in the context of the writer's frame of reference. See article.

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