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Feature Stories

Flags and Gray Guy[05.08.08] - Why Don't They Do SETI?
 A widespread and popular impression of SETI is that it's a worldwide enterprise. Well, it's not, and there's something modestly puzzling in that.

 

[05.01.08] - Astrobiology Is Alive and Well Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, opened AbSciCon 2008, the fifth bi-annual astrobiology science conference. His thoughtful view on life in the cosmic context set the tone for the vigorous and intellectually diverse meeting.

[04.10.08] - A Shadow of Ourselves As the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) enters a new phase, with the recent start of observations for radio signals from other worlds with the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array, the international scientific community has begun preparing all the more earnestly for the cascade of events that would follow the detection of an alien civilization. Among the most important questions humankind will ponder on that day is whether we should reply, and if so, what we should say.

[04.03.08] -The Mother of All Meteor Storms Each generation seems to get a chance, or two, to see a mind-boggling display of shooting stars one night. The most spectacular displays in my memory are the 1999 and 2001 Leonid storms. Before my time, observers swore by the 1966 Leonids, and could not stop talking about the spectacular 1933 and 1946 Draconid storms. Those were not quite as intense as the Leonids, but the Draconids moved so slowly that several were seen gliding across the sky at the same time.

[03.26.08] - Alien Sociology According to Hollywood, Earth is surely one of the Galaxy's "top places to visit before you die."  Cinema aliens come here often enough that the State Department should probably set up passport control.

[03.20.08] - Looking for Water on Mars 
 We are investigating the surface mineralogy of Mars in order to provide clues to its geologic history including when and where the water was present.

[03.13.08] - How We Present Ourselves to Aliens Humans live and die by approximations. We are seldom as perfect or as accurate as we would like to be. And as we contemplate what we might say to an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, maybe that's a point we should emphasize.

[03.09.08] - Movie Review: 10,000 B.C. Who doesn't like historical epics? Costume dramas that give you an up-close-and-personal look at some musty but meaningful period when life was tough, but big things were happening? The new film 10,000 B.C. gives a new look at an ancient era.

thumbnail image[03.06.08] - The Big Picture: Astrobiology. New academic disciplines often get cool receptions. Women's Studies and Quantum Mechanics were considered either frivolous or fictional by many when they first appeared in university catalogs. In the late 1930s, the manuscript that Grote Reber wrote describing low-frequency emission from the Milky Way — a pioneering work that broke open the field of radio astronomy — was uniformly rejected by reviewers for the Astrophysical Journal. Fortunately, the editor decided to publish Reber's paper anyway.

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The One that Got Away
Dr. Jonathan Fortney

The Dark Side of the Rings of Uranus Dr. Mark Showalter

An Unusual Meteor Shower on 1 September 2007 [pdf] by Dr. Peter Jenniskens.