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 - The three iconic space pillars photographed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 might have met their demise, according to new evidence from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. See http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0701/14pillars/
g Abodes - NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is currently en route to Pluto, but when it passes by Jupiter this year, the craft will also perform observations of the solar system's largest planet as well Jupiter's four major moons. See http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.phpop=modload
&name=News&file=article&sid=2212mode=thread&order
=0&thold=0.
g Life - Scientists have unearthed the fossil of a young, two-headed marine reptile that lived when dinosaurs still walked the Earth. See http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/070118_twohead_reptile.html.
g Message - What technological manifestations would make an advanced extraterrestrial civilization detectable? See http://www.coseti.org/lemarch1.htm. Note: This paper was written in 1992.
g Learning - Here’s a neat classroom resource courtesy of NASA: “Life on Earth … and Elsewhere?” This booklet contains 5 classroom activities for grades 5-10 spanning topics from "Defining Life," to "Determining the Chances of Extraterrestrial Life." See http://www.erg.pdf/.
g Imagining - There’s a neat Web site, Sector 001, that reviews the appearance of dozens of “Star Trek” aliens at http://www.powernet.net/~jcrafton/extra-in.html. It also includes some speculations about each one, particularly why so many are humanoid.
g Aftermath - Alien encounters and science fiction permeate pop culture, but what would it really mean if scientists found life beyond Earth? If even a single-celled organism on another planet was discovered, for many, this would be the last thread of evidence proving that life is simply chemistry. See http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2003/0402doser.shtml. Note: This article is from 2003.
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.