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Science Friday: Weekend Hacks - TP Launcher; Biodiesel | NOT the Aliens you're looking for | What happened to Archaeopteryx?

Submitted by Tjadendevries on Fri, 01/06/2012 - 8:19pm

No, SETI has not detected an alien signal from a Kepler planet

    Last night, I started getting emails and tweets asking about a possible detection of a radio signal coming from two of the newly-discovered planets orbiting other stars.

    Cutting to the chase: yes, a signal has been seen, but no, it’s not coming from some alien civilization. It’s almost certainly something much closer, like a satellite interfering with the observation.

    So what’s the deal?

    [...]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/01/06/no-seti-has-not-detected-an-alien-signal-from-a-kepler-planet/

I borrowed the title from here

http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2012/01/these_are_not_the_aliens_you_w.php

What happened with Archaeopteryx?

    [...]

    Recently, the news came out that beloved Archaeopteryx is not really a bird ancestor. This has happened before, Archaeopteryx and the bird family tree have had an often tenuous relationship. But it is utterly bewildering to me to see news reports about this recent science that read “… An icon knocked from its perch” or “Archaeopteryx no longer first bird.” What would be more appropriate is “Archeopteryx gets amazing new opportunity to be the iconic fossil of a form of life hitherto unknown to have existed!!!”

    And this is not even a slight exaggeration, if you’ll allow me nothing other than some compression of time.

    [...]

http://10000birds.com/what-happened-with-archaeopteryx.htm