Ever since this blogger can remember, it seems that the human race has been searching for life on other planets - such as Mars.  While the prospect of actually finding it may be exciting for some, it isn't quite the same way for others.

How come? It has something to do with what writer Nick Bostrom calls The Great Filter. Turn to the full article after the jump as we filter out the news.

With the vast size of our galaxies, it's easy to get lost in such a massive space, it seems that mini-galaxies have gone missing. Scientists are now wondering where all the mini-galaxies have gone. Have they just disappeared completely? Or have they merged with other galaxies? Details in the full article.

Many people use web translation tools to make heads or tails about reading materails written in other languages. Is it possible in the near future that we'll be able to see an option to decode alien language using...Babelfish, perhaps? According to linguist Terrence Deacon, yes it's possible, and just in time when we get to meet our outer space neighbors. Read about it in the full article.

Ever wonder if there's life outside planet Earth? If so, then you might probably be interested by the new found information by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Ideally, this planet should be filled with carbon monoxide, but in reality the astronomers were able to detect water vapor. More information in the full article.

A panel of more than 20 former pilots and U.S. government officials held a press event early this week urging the current administration to re-open its investigation on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) and find out once and for all the truth behind the existence of extra-terrestrial beings.

The topic was brought to the spotlight after Democratic U.S. presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich admitted during a televised debate that he's among those who've witnessed UFO sightings. Check out the full story via the "read more" link below.

According to a new scientific study, microbes can actually survive inside ice crystals around three kilometers thick for 100,000 years. But the most stunning part of the said research is that the scientists are now beginning to understand how these tiny life forms are able to achieve the feat.

"It is not life as we generally think about it. They are just sitting there surviving, hoping that the ice will melt," University of California Berkeley graduate student Robert Rohde commented. During the course of the study, Rohde was helped by Buford Price, a physicist from the same university.

Microbes are able to generate a tiny film of liquid water under harsh conditions. Many gases such as oxygen, hydrogen, and methane will then diffuse themselves around this film that will eventually serve as the microbes' food. They are able to resist temperatures down to -55 degrees Celsius and pressures of 300 atmospheres.

Price said that this study could lead to further understanding of extra-terrestrial life in the future. The physicist explained that the latest finding can probably explain the high heterogeneous distribution of methane in the Mars atmosphere. He then added:

The main reason for this is that most of the planets and moons in our solar system are icy worlds. Thus any type of survival mechanism and possible avenue for metabolism in cold and very cold environments would be a great evolutionary trait for any organism on an icy world.

The series of images you see above are that of Venus taken by VIRTIS aboard the Venus Express in February of this year. The mission has so far orbited the planet for 500 days, and has even more exciting surprises up its sleeves.

Quite a number of interesting data have been found, such as that the Earth's twin planet's atmosphere "seems extremely fickle." Hmmm... maybe there really is basis for affiliating the planet with women. That image above appears to corroborate that statement as various cloud activities can be seen in a matter of 10 consecutive Earth days taken in eight orbits.

Thanks to the Venus Express, about 1 Terabits (one million million bits) worth of data have been sent back to Earth, and we can definitely expect more. It has been reported that the Venus Express is doing much better than its twin spacecraft, the Mars Express, despite the challenging environment it is on.

German scientists are now convinced that life indeed exists in Mars, and they say that the evidence has been at hand a long time ago - more than 30 years to be exact.

They say that a new interpretation method applied on the findings that the Viking landers of 1976 collected reveal that the Martian surface could actually be bustling with microbes. In fact, a thousandth of it may be organic in origin.

The claim is founded on the evidence that hydrogen peroxide is present in the red planet's terrain. Some microbes in the Antarctic are known to possess the compound in their systems, which allows them to thrive in extreme environments as hostile as the aforementioned locales.

Hydrogen shields life because it has a freezing point of less than 56 degrees Celsius below zero. Organisms whose make-up possess that substance generally have high tolerance over low and high temperatures. It's even possible, they say, that these microbes came from Earth.

"We will have to find confirmatory evidence and see what kind of microbes these are and whether they are related to terrestrial microbes," says scientist Joop Houtkooper. "It is a possibility that life has been transported from Earth to Mars or vice versa a long time ago."

He then suggested to NASA and other space agencies to include other instruments for life detection on their next trip to Mars. This makes sense, as it would be practical to bring the right gear when you're spending millions on a spacecraft.

It's been portrayed in a lot of science fiction films that if a person in space ever got out of his suit, his eyeballs would be sucked out of their sockets and he'd die in a very miserable, painful way. In reality, it may actually be more subtle than that.

An article by Slate recently explored the prospect of whether or not a person can realistically survive an ordeal as harrowing as crawling out of his suit in space. The answer is yes, but it'll be a short and desperate experience.

Those worried about getting frostbite will be relieved that they won't live long enough to feel it. Though the temperatures in space are deadly frigid, heat in the body will take longer in a vacuum to escape, meaning frostbite will take some time to happen. The fittest human specimens are expected to live no more than 15 seconds. After that, the oxygen in the blood runs out and the organs will begin to fail.

If the lack of air doesn't kill you out there, something else will. Radiation from space along with ultraviolet rays are there to bombard your tissues. But that's less worrisome than extreme pressure that will make your saliva boil on your tongue before you fall unconscious.

The best way to increase your chances of survival is to insulate your body with some thick material and empty your lungs before the plunge. Holding your breath is the worst thing you can do as pressure will expand the oxygen in your lungs and create bubbles that will go to the bloodstream, eventually damaging the heart and brain.

Come to think of it, this may actually become the extreme sport of the far future. By the time commercial space travel becomes affordable for everyone, there's no stopping daredevils from trying to push themselves to new and even deadlier limits.

It looks like the best chances for the Solar System to produce life other than on the planet Earth isn't on a planet at all, but a moon. What makes it more interesting is that it's not just on any moon, but on Charon, the moon of our very own ex-planet, Pluto.

Scientists down at Hawaii's Gemini Telescope have discovered patches of ice crystals mixed with ammonia hydrates on the surface of Charon. Researchers, ruling out many theories on how the ice got there, concluded that the ice came from inside Charon itself, seeping out of cracks from the surface.

The process is known as cryo-volcanism, where liquid from below erupts to the surface and instantly freezes. Scientists believe that the cryo-volcanism in Charon is the result of a nuclear material inside it, causing the phenomenon. They also believe the ammonia hydrates acts as an antifreeze agent. Jason Cook, who led the research team that studied Charon's surface, explains:

Charon's surface is almost entirely water ice. So it must have a vast amount of water under the surface, and much of that should be frozen as well. Only deep inside Charon could water be a liquid. Yet, there is fresh ice on the surface, meaning that some liquid water must somehow reach the surface. The ammonia sitting on the surface provides the clue. It's the ammonia that helps keep some material liquid. It makes it all feasible. Without ammonia the water could not get out there.

Scientists are now speculating that Charon may hold life in her underbelly, with alien fish swimming its underground waters. The nuclear reactions would make this possible inside Charon, but the surface is a different matter, as it is far too cold (around -230 degrees Celsius.) It's funny to think that Pluto was named after the Roman god of the underworld, and Charon was the ferryman who took the dead to the underworld.

NASA's New Horizons probe, currently on the way to Pluto, will help scientists investigate Charon further when the probe arrives in July, 2015 to take a closer look and find more evidence.