As the new year begins, let us all make a resolution: We will work to make humanity a truly space-faring race. For the past half-century, we’ve ventured into space as if children wading a few feet into a great ocean. But there are other islands out there — and now is the time to swim.
This blog is dedicated to one event that very well may compel us to becoming a space-faring race: contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. It is a serious site; you won’t find a discussion of UFOs and the Fifth Dimension’s denizens here. Instead, it updates readers daily of the latest scientific advances in a number of fields related to the multidisciplinary study of astrobiology.
Its sections are loosely arranged around the now famous Drake equation, developed by astronomer Frank Drake, who conducted the first modern search for extraterrestrial life in 1960. The equation seeks to determine the number of technological civilizations that might exist among the stars:
R * FP * NE * FL * FI * FC * LN = N
In the equation, R is the mean rate of star formation averaged over the lifetime of the galaxy; FP the fraction of stars with planetary systems; NE the mean number of planets per system with environments suitable for the origin of life; FL the fraction of such planets on which life does develop; FI the fraction of such planets on which intelligent life rises during the lifetime of the local sun; FC the fraction of planets on which advanced technical civilizations rises; L the lifetime of this technical civilization; and N the number of advanced technical civilizations emitting detectable radio signals.
This blog’s sections and the general topics addressed in each one include:
g Stars -Cosmology and astronomy, which affect our understanding of the mean rate of star formation averaged over the lifetime of the galaxy and the fraction of stars with planetary systems, or R and FP in the equation
g Abodes - Geology and Earth climate, which helps us grasp the mean number of planets per system with environments suitable for the origin of life, or NE in the equation
g Life - Biology, especially the evolution of life, as well as chemistry and other sciences that advance our understanding of the fraction of such planets on which life does develop, or FL in the equation
g Intelligence - How homo sapiens and, more generally, intelligence evolves, to help us determine the fraction of such planets on which intelligent life rises during the lifetime of the local sun, or FI in the equation
g Message - A discussion of our attempts to communicate with our other intelligences, to increase our knowledge of the fraction of planets on which advanced technical civilizations rises, or FC in the equation
g Cosmicus - Humanity's climb to the status of a space-faring civilization, a necessary step to increase the lifetime of this technical civilization, or L in the equation; the term “cosmicus” comes from the father of Russian astronautics, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who envisioned humanity becoming “homo cosmicus” or a space-faring civilization — we will become “homo cosmicus” when the first human is born, lives, grows old and dies in space, returning to Earth only as a visitor
g Learning - Science education, as humanity's future and astrobiology's success depends upon a science-literate youth and public; it also is a necessary step to increase the lifetime of this technical civilization, or L in the equation
g Imagining - This section consists of musings on the possibilities of science fiction aliens as science fiction offers a literary portal for us to examine elements of the Drake Equation; I’ll primarily focus on “Star Trek,” the most popular and serious of the science fiction genre
g Aftermath - Looking beyond the Drake Equation is perhaps the most important question that will face humanity in the century ahead: “What will happen after we make contact with aliens?”; this section offers the latest speculations
I hope each of you will return daily to stay current with astrobiology — and that it may inspire you to work toward cosmicus.
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.
4 comments:
i heard on a documentary on the "science channel " that life can exist from white darwf star systems from carbon and sillicon. do you think that this could be possible and that maybe life in this cellular form was a design of life by an extraterrestrial being or society, that may explain why there arent any other life forms in this solar system.
james
caroatlantic@hotmail.com
please respond
thank you
Interesting speculations - we simply don't know enough to rule out those possibilities.
Considering what we do know, silicon-based life doesn't seem likely as silicon simply can't form long chains of molecules as can carbon. I would suspect almost all life is universally carbon-based; the differences will appear in the solvents that lifeforms use (such as water or liquid ammonia or formamide) or the makeup of the nucleic acid that contains their genetic instructions, which likley will not be DNA as is ours.
As for ETI creating lifeforms, if they're as avanced as us, they probably will- after all, we humans just did earlier this year(2010)!
What if we are the very first civilization ever in the Universe, I mean it could be possible? The chemical elements in the Universe have been produced by many cosmic processes (for instance nuclear processes) over a long period of time since the Big Bang. Actually the Big Bang generated the Hydrogen, and the first generation of stars created Helium, and from that the Beryllium, then Carbon. After that each generation of stars since the Big Bang got a little bit more heavy elements than the previous stars. Those stars had a full life, exploded and the matter mixed with the dust from around and created other stars with more heavy elements. Although the Stars can exist only with lighter elements than Beryllium in order the thermonuclear reactions inside the core to take place, still the life as we know it on their planets need heavier elements too in order to emerge. The third generations of stars since the Big Bang are rich in heavy metals and our Sun belongs to it.
Well, I believe that the very first civilization in the Universe, since the Big Bang, said the same thing like us “we would be very closed minded not thinking about the fact that may be intelligence and life in other solar systems”, and of course they were wrong because the answer was “they were alone”. Wouldn't you be proud if the Mankind is the first intelligent civilization ever in our Universe (it could be a super-cluster of Universes that could merge like the galaxies....)? Octavian www.myspace.com/octavian7
There is actually evidence that the claim that silicon "cannot form long chains" is temperature-dependent and not universally true. That is, the only reason why silicon cannot form long chains at room temperature is that silicon bindings are not resilient to such "high" temperatures. Experiments show that silicon-based analogs of complex organic molecules can be created in liquid nitrogen, but that such molecules break apart when exposed to liquid water, just like complex carbon-based organic molecules break apart when exposed to red hot lava.
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