Tenth Planets Moon Pre Cellular Life And The Great Silence

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 - Common wisdom holds that we can never see a black hole because nothing can escape it - not even light. Fortunately, black holes aren't completely black. Within a few years, astronomers believe they will be able to peer close to the horizon of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. See article.g ABODES - The astronomers who claim to have discovered the 10th planet in the solar system have another intriguing announcement: It has a moon. See article.g LIFE - Virtually all biologists now agree that bacterial cells cannot form from nonliving chemicals in one step. If life arises from nonliving chemicals, there must be intermediate forms, "pre-cellular life." Of the various theories of precellular life, the most popular contender today is "the RNA world." See article.g INTELLIGENCE - The emotional intelligence of students indirectly contributes to academic success in information technology studies, preliminary results from a study led by Virginia Tech researchers show. See article.g MESSAGE - During the early 1980s, David Brin offered an explanation for Fermi's Paradox, which asked why if extraterrestrial life existed it wasn't on Earth. Brin's answer: The Zoo Hypothesis. Here's a copy of that groundbreaking paper, "The 'Great Silence': The Controversy Concerning Extraterrestrial Life".g COSMICUS - Researchers at UC Irvine and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute have developed a two-person, centrifuge-like, one-stop workout machine that makes its own gravity. See article.g LEARNING - Here's a neat classroom activity courtesy of NASA: "Planets in a Bottle." The lesson plan involves yeast experiments intended for second through fourth grade students. See lesson.g IMAGINING - Could the legendary dragons of Pern from Anne McCaffrey's famous science fiction novels actually exist? Welcome to the theoretical science of dracogenetics. See article.g AFTERMATH - Would dutiful American citizens trust the government to handle first contact with extraterrestrials and rush to get information to the public? See article. Note: This article is from 1999.Get your SF book manuscript edited