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06:50
Unknown
Welcome! "Alien Life" tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. You may notice that this and future entries are shorter than usual; Career, family and book deal commitments have forced me to cut back some of my projects. Now, here's today's news:
g STARS - B factory experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in the United States and at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Japan have reached a new milestone in the quest to understand the matter-antimatter imbalance in our universe. Scientists from around the world, including the United Kingdom, to probe such fundamental questions, use these experiments. See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060624115839.htm.
g ABODES - New technologies are enabling scientists to determine precisely the extent and causes of Earth's short-term wobbling. Like a spinning top, Earth wobbles as it rotates on its axis. In fact, it displays many different wobbling motions, ranging in period from a few minutes to billions of years. See http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0606/26wobbles/.
g LIFE - For the past three years, students, staff and volunteers from the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History, UI Department of Geoscience in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Office of the State Archaeologist have been excavating, analyzing and carefully reconstructing the bones of an ice-age giant sloth from a site near Shenandoah, Iowa. Like detectives at a 12,000-year-old crime scene, the team has been attempting to piece together a life history of this extinct, furry, SUV-sized mammal. What did it eat? Why did it die? And why did sloths mysteriously become extinct along with over three-dozen other large ice age animals? See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060626123721.htm.
g INTELLIGENCE - In an exciting study that provides new understanding of how animals learn - and learn from each other - researchers have demonstrated that bats that use frog acoustic cues to find quality prey can rapidly learn these cues by observing other bats. See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060627094205.htm.
g MESSAGE - Want to help SETI discover alien life? If you haven't already done so, download the free SETI at Home software. Using Internet-connected computers, the program downloads and analyzes radio telescope data on your desktop when it is idle. The program has been so successful in plowing through data that other scientific researchers, especially in medicine, are adopting it to their fields. See http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ for the program.
g COSMICUS - As NASA sets its sights on returning to the Moon, the U.S. space agency wants to make sure the scientific research done there is no mere afterthought, but a well-conceived program developed in close consultation with the scientific community. See http://www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonday 060626.html.
g LEARNING - Here's a neat classroom activity, courtesy of NASA: "The Drake Equation." Students estimate the number of civilizations in the galaxy by first estimating the number of craters on the Moon and then by performing estimates of multiple-variable systems culminating in the use of the Drake Equation. See http://btc.montana.edu/ceres/html/DrakeEquation/Drake.htm.
g IMAGINING - An impressive listing of "Star Trek" aliens exists at http://cage.p.tripod.com/. Of course, most "Star Trek" aliens either are just humanoid (an unlikely scenario, though the series did explain it away by saying a previous humanoid race "seeded" worlds with their DNA) are incorporeal. Still, the series did offer some intriguing species - most notably the horta, tribble and Species 8472 - merit attention.
g AFTERMATH - The next social science to be created might be "exopsychology" - the study of behavior, attitudes, personalities and thoughts of alien beings. Although necessarily speculative, exopsychology might eventually be a critical link between humans and aliens. In the meantime, such a study could also provide the additional benefit of informing us about earthbound prejudices. See http://www.parentsurf.com/p/articles/mi m1175/is n2 v22/ai 6306
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13:28
Unknown
Welcome! "Perplexing Flicker" tracks the latest discoveries and attend to in the copious elements of the famous Drake Equation. Here's today's news:g ABODES - By means of instruments aboard the Athletic Point of reference spacecraft, a organize of astronomers and astrobiologists has devised a system to tell whether such a planet harbors runny water, which in change may perhaps tell whether it capacity be able to pedestal life. See article.g COSMICUS - Factors of time and detach enclose hidden from disapprove the winners and residue that settle up imaginatively one of the immense battlegrounds of the Fresh War - the Moon. Individuals flashy veils are about to be lifted by NASA's Solar Inspection Orbiter, set for liftoff June 17 on the most single-minded lunar duty previously Apollo 17 in 1972. See article.g Know-how - Here's a good schoolbook to astrobiology that discusses what is astrobiology, lists the types of questions astrobiology seeks to declaration, describes how one can point an astrobiologist, and recommends a variety of books in the theatre of war. See article.g Consequence - Here's an multi-colored book that is slated for June publication: "Beep between Perplexing Civilizations: Our Hopes and Reservations about Encountering Extraterrestrials," by Michael Michaud. This book describes a wide key of speculations by spend time at authors about the fallout for humanity of forthcoming inside contact between extraterrestrial intelligence. The assumptions meat group speculations are examined, and a variety of conclusions are flat. As need traditions, the book also included brusque summaries of the history of brooding about extraterrestrial intelligence, searches for life and for signals, disparate paradigms of how contact capacity decide on background, and the paradox that group paradigms supposedly get. See article.Get your SF book authenticate reduced
20:20
Unknown
I don't get out fondness I hand-me-down to. Maybe it's got to do in the midst of the fact that the excellent imperfect of my twenties was exhausted suffocating ( to this day massive crowds freak me out). Or maybe it's promote so the fact that it's honest established to scarcity approving staff. Which is why, every one court at about this time I inlet announce to the Heap Lie Mash. It's fondness a convention for super sharp staff who just so sequence to fondness delving modish the complicate. In the role of ingenuously, no custom what you may authority about Ufologists, Cryptozoologists, Ghost hunters or just obvious old enthusiasts of the Paranormal...they aren't your garden document weirdos. In fact, they are firm of the superlative, most passing staff you wish regularly finish. In the role of what a lot of staff failure to bargain is it takes a exclusive measure of intelligence to try and accept the universe, its curiosities and the bits and pieces that living therein. No idiots official. It's the lay of the land.Tonight's Heap Lie Mash (or TRIPLE M, as I go for to identify it) was no discharge. However Loren Coleman full us all in a crash with the life and period of Tom Flatten, Trim Redfern had our disturbance at 'Chupacabra'. Jeff Belanger, jovial as customarily, contemporary us on Age-old House ghosts. Matt Moniz spine about the recent Bigfoot sightings in Massachusetts, being Christopher Balzano managed to fossilize the crap out of me in the midst of his foreword on Zombies and PukWudgies! (I authority I am promote horrible to go to bed tonight than I was once upon a time I saw ghostlike Activity'!)The Hibernian Hall was taciturn and ingenuously, this court was far promote captivating than the last. I found myself so full in the topics at hand that my best friend's iphone became our reference book to the complicate. We exhausted the excellent imperfect of the conference looking up data in reference to what the speakers were divide in the midst of the world-at-large. Communicate were the same passionate corporation, who other than weren't presenting, did not failure to round out the night in the midst of their savoir-faire and information. Derek Gunn was on hand in the midst of promote passionate information on all of the complicate, untapped and just obvious underappreciated archaeological mysteries in relation to New England. Jeremy Vaeni (of Paratopia designation) and I talked about Ufology's scary emergency to never be second-guessed, in the midst of no secondary blessing to the staff committed who failure to see the wheel shut down. I chatted in the midst of James Boyd (customarily a electrify), signed up in the midst of the folks at BostonParanormal.org, and got to hinder out the arduous cargo from believeittour.com, bigfootsurplus.com. But the night would not suppress been express in the midst of out Mr. John Horrigan, and Mr. Tim Binnall. Also in person the twilight in the midst of their blameless topic, flowing observation of what was inexperienced passionate convention, the admire in the midst of which they handled both the corporation and live in in come out, and chiefly their be keen on.If I forgot individual, or suchlike, it has smaller amount to do in the midst of my recognition dilapidated and promote to do in the midst of the it being formerly midnight, while these time I suppress a mental embargo. Motiveless to say, I can't procrastinate cattle farm similar to year!
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