Welcome! "Alien Life" tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. Here's today's news:
g Abodes - A new study could shed light on the composition of exoplanets. By studying the abundance of elements in stars, researchers have shown that there are a wide variety of planetary systems that are unlike the Solar System. Ultimately, this could affect processes like plate tectonics on any planets they host. See article.
g Life - A new study indicates that periodic uplifting of the Earth's continents could be linked to booms and busts in marine biodiversity over the past 500 million years. See article.
g Learning - Astrobiology has the “-ology” suffix suggestive of a codified science, but things aren’t quite so black and white. For one thing, it’s tough to study life beyond Earth when we haven’t found it, and because of this inconvenient detail, astrobiology, for all its extraterrestrial grandiosity, is actually a very Earth-centric field. 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.