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 - Astronomers at the University of Illinois say that rather than being an only child, the sun could have hundreds or thousands of celestial siblings that are now dispersed across the heavens. The researchers conclusions could reshape current theories on how, when and where planets form around stars. See article.
g Abodes - NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered 16 extrasolar planet candidates orbiting a variety of distant stars in the central region of our Milky Way galaxy. Five of the newly found planets represent a new extreme type of planet not found in any nearby searches. See http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0610/04hubbleplanets/.
g Cosmicus - Book alert: What future possibilities for space travel are the most likely to succeed? What are the greatest challenges and advantages of space travel for humankind? What are the potential moral and ethical implications of our space explorations? “Space, the Final Frontier?” imaginatively illustrates the possibilities that the exploration and subsequent exploitation of space opens up for humankind. Authors Giancarlo Genta and Michael Rycroft delve into the factors that encourage space travel and speculate on the future of human expansion into space. See http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521814030.
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.