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 - Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have seen dramatic changes in the upper atmosphere of a faraway planet. The observations are an example of how scientists can observe changing climates and weather on distant worlds. See article.
g Cosmicus - The B612 Foundation has announced plans to build, launch and operate the first privately funded deep space mission. Sentinel will be a space telescope placed in orbit around the Sun, and will create a comprehensive map of the inner Solar System. See article.
g Imagining - A typical Hollywood alien is "soft, squishy and big on mucus," in the words of Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. These sci-fi lumps of goo are inclined to abduct us, probe us, hover above us and even walk among us (in disguise, of course). But far beyond Hollywood's limited scope, aliens might really exist. What are they like, and how would they actually handle a human encounter? Astrobiologists have deduced a few answers by combining their knowledge of life on Earth with their understanding of the cosmos as a whole. Their profile of ET might not be what you expected. 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.