Welcome! “Alien Life” tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. Today’s news:
g Stars - Also known as Alpha Canis Majoris, Sirius is the fifth closest system to Sol, at 8.6 light-years away. Might it support habitable planets? See http://www.solstation.com/stars/sirius2.htm.
g Abodes - An international team of professional and amateur astronomers, using simple off-the-shelf equipment to trawl the skies for planets outside our solar system, has hauled in its first "catch." See http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.phpop=modload
&name=News&file=article&sid=1968&mode=thread
&order=0&thold=0.
g Life - Book alert: Are we alone, literally freaks of nature, just one planet of living, breathing things amidst a seemingly infinite, lifeless desert? This is one of the big questions posed by human nature, one that we have traditionally looked to religion to answer, but that is now coming within the grasp of science. Despite - or perhaps because - of this, we find increasing opposition to allocating resources to space exploration. Biochemist Robert Shapiro is an unabashed supporter of this research, and his book “Planetary Dreams: The Quest to Discover Life Beyond Earth” is both a compelling response to the stay-at-homes and a pleasantly readable overview of what we know and don't know about the origin of life here and elsewhere. See http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471179361/104059411671863
10v=glance&n=283155.
g Intelligence - A group of monkeys have shown a similar ability to humans in telling the difference between large and small groups of dots, according to a recent study by Duke University researchers. See http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/051102_monkey_math.html.
g Message - A lot of science fiction doesn’t offer a particularly accurate description of SETI. Here’s one piece that does: James Gunn’s novel “The Listeners,” published by Signet in 1972. This offers a good early portrayal of a scientifically reasonable search.
g Cosmicus - Thousands of tiny fruit flies soon will journey into space to help NASA scientists better understand changes in the human immune system caused by space flight. See http://www.
astrobio.net/news/modules.phpop=modload&name=News&file=
article&sid=2001&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0.
g Learning - Looking for an overview of the astrobiological field? Try "Introduction to Exobiology", which explores the field from a lay perspective and includes a self-test. It's part of the Cruising Chemistry project at Duke.
g Imagining - Like first contact stories? Then be sure to read Arthur C. Clarke’s short story "Loophole," appearing in the April 1946 issue of Astounding.
g Aftermath - Humans live and die by approximations. We are seldom as perfect or as accurate as we would like to be. And as we contemplate what we might say to an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, maybe that's a point we should emphasize. See http://seti.astrobio.net/news/article10.html.
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The Drake Equation
This formula estimates the number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy.N=(R*)(Ns)(Fp)(Ne)(Fl)(Fi)(Fc)(L)
Where:- N = Number of civilizations we can communicate with
- R* = Average star formation rate
- Ns = Percentage of stars capable of supporting earth-like planets
- Fp = Percentage of those stars with planets
- Ne = Average umber of planets in those stars' habitable zones
- Fl = Percentage of those planets where life begins
- Fi = Percentage of planets with life where an intelligent species evolves
- Fc = Percentage of those intelligent species that develop communication technology
- L = Average lifetime, in years, of a civilization that develops such technology
About Me
- Rob Bignell
- I'm the owner and chief editor at Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the editing and proofreading needs of writers both new and published. For more than two decades, I worked as an award-winning journalist, with half of those years spent as an editor. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres have been published, and I am the author of the nonfiction “Hikes with Tykes” series, a novel "Windmill", and a collection of poetry, "Love Letters to Sophie's Mom". For seven years I worked as an English teacher or a community college journalism instructor. I hold a master's degree in English and a bachelor's in journalism and English.