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 - The Arecibo Observatory has made new observations of a binary near-Earth asteroid named KW4. Studying the formation and evolution of such near-Earth asteroids helps researchers learn how to mitigate the potential threat they pose to Earth. KW4 is classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid, but data show that its path will not intersect Earth's for at least 1,000 years. See article.
g Life - Just as the guy with the flashy sports car doesn’t always attract the ladies, female animals may not judge the male with the most elaborate ornamental display to be the best mate. See http://
www.livescience.
com/animalworld/061103_mate_selection.html.
g Intelligence - In two recent studies, scientists discovered the common pigeon is astonishingly sophisticated, having an amazing long-term memory and the ability to make group decisions based on different sets of conditions. See article.
g Cosmicus - See In 2007, The Planetary Society will send a DVD to Mars. The disk, which will be attached to the deck of the Phoenix lander, will include stories, essays, and art inspired by the Red Planet. People around the world can add their names (or those of family and friends) to the disk, which should last for many hundreds of years and might someday be read by future Martian explorers. See http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.phpop=modload&name=News
&file=article&sid=2137mode=thread&order=0&thold
Get your SF book manuscript edited
=0.
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.