1.   Alien life.

2.   Alien life, the new thinking goes, might not actually need the warming rays of a nearby star.

3.   But for the next few years, radio-telescopes will be our only practical way of making contact with alien life.

4.   If intelligent alien life ever gets discovered this way, the person whose computer actually caught that first signal will get a small share of the glory.

5.   If the meteorite does indeed prove to be our first glimpse of alien life, both Darwin and God will thereby be enhanced.

6.   Instead of controlling building construction and human environments, you oversee the creation and maintenance of alien life and space stations.

7.   Its researchers study not only the possibility of alien life but how life began and evolved on Earth.

8.   Menacing men with flashlights, shot in silhouette and often from the waist down, noisily search a Northern California forest for signs of alien life.

9.   NASA and many scientists want to know if the sea exists and if alien life thrives in its inky depths.

10.   Now, the Planetary Society, a nonprofit group that has long backed the hunt for alien life, is sponsoring three new optical SETI programs.