Welcome! "Alien Life" tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. Here's today's news:
g Message - The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program has not gone unscathed from the recent economic turmoil. In fact, in April of last year, their flagship radar field went dark. However, renewed funding has brought the radars back online and their hunt will soon be aided by the largest telescope the earth has ever seen. See article.
g Cosmicus - The Japanese space agency (JAXA) has confirmed a new mission to collect samples from an asteroid and return them safely to earth, and has set the target as 1999 JU3 - one of the damper asteroids in range. See article.
g Aftermath - Book alert: In “Cosmic Company: The Search for Life in the Universe,” published in late 2003, authors Seth Shostak and Alex Barnett ponder the possibility of alien a life, and the consequences of receiving a signal from the cosmos. They explain why scientists think sentient life might exist on other worlds, how we could discover it, and what it might be like. Entertaining and informative, this hard cover book is lavishly illustrated. See reviews.
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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.