Welcome! “Alien Life” tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. You may notice that this and future entries are shorter than usual; Career, family and book deal commitments have forced me to cut back some of my projects. Now, here’s today’s news:
g Stars - Recent discoveries add yet more variety to the bewildering diversity of protoplanetary disk shapes - ranging from donuts to spirals - that astronomers are finding as they study the birthing grounds of planets around other stars. See http://www.astrobio.
net/news/modules.phpop=modload&name=News&file=article
&sid=2007mode=thread&order=0&thold=0.
g Abodes - New technologies are enabling scientists to determine precisely the extent and causes of Earth's short-term wobbling. Like a spinning top, Earth wobbles as it rotates on its axis. In fact, it displays many different wobbling motions, ranging in period from a few minutes to billions of years. Some of these are well studied, like the Chandler wobble of 433 days and the annual wobble, which together can tilt Earth's axis up to 10 meters [30 feet] from its nominal center. See http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php
op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2005mode=thread&order
=0&thold=0.
g Life - Somewhere on Earth, close to 4 billion years ago, a set of molecular reactions flipped a switch and became life. Scientists try to imagine this animating event by simplifying the processes that characterize living things. New research suggests the simplification needs to go further. See http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/060609_life_origin.html.
g Intelligence - Can Darwinism explain the birth and extinction of art movements, or the enduring appeal of Jane Austen? See http://
www.theage.com.au/news/arts/peacockstailfansourflames/2006/
06/21/1150845231655.html.
g Cosmicus - As the Cassini spacecraft reaches the halfway mark in its four-year tour of the Saturn system, discoveries made during the first half of the mission have scientists revved up to find out what's in store for the second act. See http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0606/28cassini/.
g Aftermath - Here’s an interesting book for some astrobiological reading: “After Contact: The Human Response to Extraterrestrial Life”by Albert A. Harrison. See http://www.amazon.com/gp/
product/customerreviews/0306456214/10426166182449525_encoding
=UTF8&me=ATVPDKIKX0DER&s=books for some reviews.
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.