Free Republic

A new study... provides an updated estimate of the likely number of alien civilizations that could exist in the Milky Way. The analysis...starts with revising the Drake equation... "The classic method for estimating the number of intelligent civilizations relies on making guesses of values relating to life," said Westby in a press release. "Our new study simplifies these assumptions using new data, giving us a solid estimate of the number of civilizations in our Galaxy." Westby and Conselice...built a key assumption in to their estimate: Life on another planet will arise in a similar way to how it did on...

Washington, D.C., is full of conspiracy theories and political intrigue at the best of times. When it comes to talk about aliens in the U.S. capital, it's often about calls for the CIA to reveal what it did with a UFO that allegedly crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in the 1950s, or buzz about frozen alien bodies in the basement of the Pentagon. But next week in Washington, talk about aliens will be taken with furrowed-brow seriousness. It's not speculation about pregnant women and Martian abductions, but the painstaking search for possible Martian microbes. Not alien invaders, but talk about...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Alisha Klingenmeyer of Anchorage recalled spotting an orange-red fireball streaking across the sky as she drove north at about 8 p.m. Thursday. Paul Vos was watching a movie with his wife and son at their home in Hope at about 8:30 p.m. the same night when all three saw an arc of light over the mountains in the southern sky.snip This year's Taurids, whose weeklong peak of meteor activity NASA said would start today, were expected to be brighter and more frequent than usual, Chappelow said. "We're running through the (comet's) orbit, which is like a flow,...