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 - Phoenix, NASA’s latest mission to Mars, will land in the planet’s northern polar region. It will dig down into the permafrost, which lies just below the surface, and look for signs of past habitability. See article.
g Life - Dinosaurs had sex well before they reached full physical maturity, just as crocodiles and people can, research now reveals. See article.
g Message - Many common ideas about SETI just aren’t true, but that doesn't prevent them from popping up in popular articles, blogs, books and even movies. Here are three of my favorite fallacies about SETI. See article.
g Cosmicus - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the latest U.S. mission to Mars — the Phoenix Mars Lander — has passed two in-flight checks. See article.
g Learning - Astronomy Online provides a wealth of resources and information for teachers, students, or anyone interested in astronomy. The content is arranged into nine broad categories including Observation, Science, Solar System, Stars, Our Galaxy, Cosmology, Astrobiology, Exoplanets, and Astrophotography. See review.
g Imagining - Ever wondered how all those traditional space-opera and epic-fantasy races - the pig-faced warriors, the smug bumheads, and all the rest - came up with their wonderfully clichéd alien vocabularies? It's not difficult; once you've mastered these basic rules, you'll be able to produce names and phrases just as stereotypical as theirs. See article.
g Aftermath - How will an alien visit influence the world’s religions? Here’s one common man’s view.
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.