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 Abodes - Worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning are dramatically altering ocean chemistry and threatening marine organisms, including corals, that secrete skeletal structures and support oceanic biodiversity. A landmark report released July 5 summarizes the known effects of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide on these organisms, known as marine calcifiers, and recommends future research for determining the extent of the impacts. See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060705083057.htm.
g Life - After years of searching for evidence of microbial life in the driest region of Chile’s Atacama Desert, chemist Jacek Wierzchos finally found it. Living inside rocks made of salt. But how it manages to eke out a living there is still a bit of a mystery. See http://www.
astrobio.net/news/modules.phpop=modload&name=News&file=article
&sid=2013mode=thread&order=0&thold=0.
g Intelligence - Doctors have their first proof that a man who was barely conscious for nearly 20 years regained speech and movement because his brain spontaneously rewired itself by growing tiny new nerve connections to replace the ones sheared apart in a car crash. See http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/ap_060705_coma.html.
g Cosmicus - The shuttle Discovery is closing in on the international space station today for a long-awaited linkup that will boost the lab's crew size to three, provide more than 5,000 pounds of equipment and supplies and give mission managers their first detailed view of the fragile heat shield tiles on the shuttle's belly. See http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts121/060706debris/.
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.