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 - More than half the stars in our galaxy are small, dim M dwarfs. Until recently, scientists believed these stars put out too little light to support life on any planets that orbited them. But at a recent workshop held at the SETI Institute, a multidisciplinary group of researchers concluded not only that M dwarfs might host habitable planets, but that they might also be good targets in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. See article.
g Abodes - Astronomers have discovered that the dwarf planet Eris is more massive than Pluto, and is likely composed of rock and ice. Objects in this little-known region of space, known as the Kuiper Belt, are important relics of the early Solar System and can teach us about a period of time when the Earth was first forming. See http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.phpop=modload&name=News
&file=article&sid=2366mode=thread&order=0&thold=0.
g Life - Quote of the Day: "Wherever liquid water and chemical energy are found, there is life. There is no exception." — Wesley Huntress, Jr.
g Cosmicus - The design of hotels in orbit is a feast for the imagination of architects and interior designers. The basic ideas have been well understood since people lived safely in the US space station "Skylab" in 1973-74. But the cost of getting to and from orbit has remained so high that tourism hasn't got started yet, and so there's been little incentive for anyone to make the effort required to design true orbital hotels. However, remembering that the hotel industry (or "hospitality industry") is a huge, highly competitive, global industry, we can foresee that once accommodation in orbit gets started as a business, it will grow and grow as companies compete to provide more interesting services for their guests. See http://www.spacefuture.com/habitat/hoteldesign.shtml.
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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.