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 - What are the habitable zones for the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri ABC?
g Life - Researchers have modeled a primitive cell, or protocell, that is capable of building, copying and containing DNA. The study could help us understand how the earliest cells on Earth formed and evolved. See article.
g Message - After 20 years of listening for signs of life elsewhere in the universe, The Planetary Society is now watching the skies. On April 11, 2006 the Society dedicated a brand new optical telescope at an observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts, designed solely to search for light signals from alien civilizations - a search known as Optical SETI. See article.
g Cosmicus - A British space expert described the Phoenix Mars probe's successful landing as a "massive step forward" in the quest to establish whether life can exist on the Red Planet. See article.
g Aftermath - Here’s a hidden gem about alien contact: the science fiction story “Contact, Incorporated”, about a private company that Earth’s government hires to make first contact with extraterrestrials. It’s from 1950 and appears in the seminal classic, “The Classic Book of Science Fiction,” edited by Groff Conklin (your library ought to have this volume). Despite being more than a half-century old, it remains an intriguing examination of how to communicate with aliens.
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.