Welcome! "Alien Life" tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation.Here's today's news:
g Life - A new study shows how a relatively simple combination of naturally occurring sugars and amino acids offers a plausible route to the building blocks of life. See article.
g Message - Mitch Waldrop, feature editor for Nature Magazine, has written a thoughtful piece on the state of SETI science in the wake of the shutdown of the Allen Telescope Array. The article presents a variety of opinions, including quotes from a few people here at Berkeley. See article.
g Cosmicus - After a journey of almost three years, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has reached Endeavour crater. Here the rover will study rocks that could shed new light on the history of the Martian climate and the potential for past life on Mars. See article.
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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.