They're Thinking, There Goes the Neighborhood...

Astronomers searching for advanced life beyond Earth should focus their attention around beta CVn, a binary star roughly 26 light-years away that resembles our own Sun.

The recommendation comes from a shortlist of likely life-bearing systems compiled by Margaret Turnbull, at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St Louis, Missouri, US.

She adds that researchers looking for any kind of life - including basic forms that could not send communications to Earth - should take a particularly close look around another star epsilon Indi A.

Both the stars share similar traits, Turnbull says: "They're mature, very stable, calm stars. They're stars that are acting like they're taking care of someone."
Planetary picks

Turnbull began her analysis by looking at thousands of stars in a catalogue of stellar distances measured by the Hipparcos mission. In 2003, she had narrowed the list down to 30 stars that might harbour planets in so-called "habitable zones".

One star, 37 Gem, topped the list at that point. But Turnbull has now refined the criteria, meaning 37 Gem does not make the new shortlist of 10 stars. She says 37 Gem is simply further away from the now higher-ranking stars, making it more difficult for scientists to observe clearly.

The rationale for the stellar shortlist, says Turnbull, is to answer the question of "which stars are the absolute best ones for us to spend our telescope time on?" And she notes: "This all comes down to what we know about life on Earth..."

What we know about life on earth? Now that's a scary thought.

At 26 light-years away, if they're listening with better ears than we have, they'll be watching to see whether we elect Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan this fall.

Bad choices, radiating out to the galaxy at the speed of light, are bound to get us talked about.

By our standards, 26 light years is a long way using the speed limit in this bubble of the multiverse. Forewarned is forearmed. They don't need to bother with us if they get around using shortcuts. It doesn't look like we're going to go looking for them any time soon:

A planned life-hunting project is NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder, would look for life by imaging forms potentially habitable planets. That might reveal life that does not deliberately send any signals off their home planet.

But the mission, which some anticipated would launch in 2014, has been postponed due to cuts in NASA's science budget proposed by US President George W Bush on 6 February 2006. "TPF is essentially shelved," says Turnbull.

The budget cuts would mean that NASA's 2007 budget for astrobiology would be 50% of that in 2005, according to Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute.

It's because it's astrobiology. Dear Leader just knows any astrobiologist is also an astro secular humanist. Or is that a secular alienist?

If Big Time Dick thought they had oil you can bet Halliburton would be sending Dyncorp Special Op bots out to offer them a contract. Bechtel would be offering to build nukular reactors and the IAEA would be insisting they allow Carlyle Group operativesinspectors in to assess them. All the more reason for any aliens to avoid publically contacting us problem children any time soon.