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 - Ever since their discovery 11 years ago, brown dwarfs have baffled scientists. First it was the question of how to categorize them. These celestial orbs are too massive to be a planet and not massive enough to be a star. Now scientists are investigating astonishing weather patterns on brown dwarfs that could rival Jupiter's Great Red Spot and even Earth's intense hurricanes.
See http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060703_mystery
_monday.html.
g Abodes - It may be difficult for two people to have a conversation on Mars, according to a research paper by Penn State graduate student in acoustics Amanda Hanford and Lyle Long, professor of aerospace engineering. See http://www.astrobio.net/news/
modules.phpop=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2011mode=
thread&order=0&thold=0.
g Life - Entrance fees to Utah's Bryce Canyon National Park will fund a two-year research study to survey and map the park's fossil sites. See http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/184870/4/.
g Intelligence - A study of the sleep characteristics of 669 middle-aged adults found that people sleep much less than they should, and even less than they think. Published in the July issue in the American Journal of Epidemiology, the study also found that blacks sleep less than whites, men sleep less than women, and the poor sleep less than the wealthy. See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060703162945.htm.
g Cosmicus - The space shuttle Discovery and its flag-waving crew thundered into space today, putting on a spectacular Fourth of July skyshow as it rocketed away on a long-awaited mission to repair and resupply the international space station. See http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts121/060704launch/.
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.