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 - Astronomers on alien planets almost certainly have the Earth listed as a world teeming with life, a leading scientist says. See article. Note: This article is from 2002.
gLife - Researchers have found that fungi may be able to use radioactivity as an energy source for making food and spurring growth. The findings may have profound implications for how we understand the cycles of biologically available energy for life, and could also have important applications for space exploration. See http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2349&mode=
thread&order=0&thold=0.
g Intelligence - Quote of the Day: "One of the distinctions and triumphs of the advance of science has been the deprovincialization of our world view." — Carl Sagan
g Cosmicus - NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has lifted off into the unknown. This first mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt — a distant district of ancient, icy, rocky objects on the solar system’s outer banks — is assured to transmit back to Earth numbers of revelations. See http://space.com/businesstechnology/051123_pluto_horizons.html.
g Learning - Need a map of a planet in our solar system? Try this database of JPL/Caltech-generated planetary maps: http://maps.jpl.nasa.gov/.
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.