SCIENCE IN THE NEWS WEEKLY
Space: Refining Our Alien Greeting
How many scientists does it take to craft a better greeting to be broadcast into space in the hopes of reaching other life forms out there? Two, apparently: one to write the code and one to role-play an out-of-this-world listener. At least that's what a pair of researchers from the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University have concluded.
When looking for life beyond this planet, researchers would be wise to pay attention to clues easily overlooked. That's a lesson learned from newly understood cave deposits long thought to be ordinary minerals. They are actually mats of waste produced by newly identified microbes.
And while the search for alien life has not yet been successful, our view of our closest cosmic neighbors continues to improve. For instance, NASA has released the latest raw images of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
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