Goldilocks And Our Solar System How Spacesuits Work And Primer For Decoding Messages Extraterrestrial Messages

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 ABODES - Strange though it may seem, Goldilocks tasting the three bears porridge is a good analogy to idea of there being a "habitable zone" within our solar system, and others. A habitable zone is the region around a star in which liquid water could exist on a planet's surface, liquid water being one of the necessary ingredients for life. Stars of different luminosities (brightness) have differently sized habitable zones. For example, a dim star would have a habitable zone that was much closer to it than a bright star. See article.

g COSMICUS - How do spacesuits work? Here's a good primer.

g LEARNING - Here's a neat classroom activity courtesy of NASA: Who Can Live Here? Students explore the limits of life on Earth to extend their beliefs about life to include its possibility on other worlds. See article.

g AFTERMATH - Will we ever find a primer for decoding messages from extraterrestrials? Late last year, anthropologists who gathered for a major conference in Atlanta heard some news that will be sobering for SETI enthusiasts: It may be much more difficult to understand extraterrestrials than many scientists have thought before. See article.