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 - You're an astrobiologist standing in the center of a vast, empty expanse of rock and dust pockmarked with impact craters. There's no water here, no life, but your task is to collect data important for the study of life in the Universe. Douglas Adams, in his book "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," said that "a towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have." In order to accomplish your task, you've packed an entire suitcase. The question is what did you bring? See http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.phpop=modload
&name=News&file=article&sid=2164mode=thread&order=0&thold=0.
g Life - To survive the urban jungle, birds change their tune, with faster-paced and higher-pitched songs to make them heard above the din. This discovery, announced today, could help reveal which birds can adapt to life in the city and which can't, researchers said. See http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/061204_urban_birdsong.
html.
g Intelligence - Neanderthals suffered periods of starvation and may have supplemented their diet through cannibalism, according to a study of remains from northwest Spain. See http://www.livescience.
com/humanbiology/061204_neanderthal_lifestyle.html.
g Cosmicus - NASA's return to the moon next decade will be focused on establishing a permanent base near one of the lunar poles to take advantage of near-constant sunlight for solar power, agency officials said. See http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0612/04lunarbases/.
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.