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 - A star must live in a relatively tranquil cosmic neighborhood to foster planet formation, say astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. See article.
g Abodes - Shorefront property, anyone? These Cassini radar images taken during a flyby a week ago show lakes on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. The clear shorelines are reminiscent of terrestrial lakes. With Titan's colder temperatures and hydrocarbon-rich atmosphere, however, the lakes likely contain a combination of methane and ethane, not water. See http://www.spaceflightnow.com/cassini/060930titanlakes.html.
g Life - Just as siblings may scuffle over who gets the front seat or access to the TV remote control, some bird siblings jostle for position in their nests. Those with winning moves can sit in the spot where mom is most likely to deliver food. See http://www.livescience.
com/animalworld/060926_sibling_rivalry.html.
g Cosmicus - The pieces are coming together for NASA’s next spaceship Orion as space agency engineers begin working with lead contractor Lockheed Martin to shape the vehicle’s cockpit. See http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/060927_techwed_orion.
html. For related story, see “Committee Warns NASA To Keep CEV on Track” at http://www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_061002.html.
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.