Welcome! "Alien Life" tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. Here's today's news:
g Stars - Japanese observers have spotted a nova, the fourth seen in Sagittarius so far this year. This one is relatively bright and easy to spot from your backyard. See article.
g Abodes - An advanced telescope imaging system has begun taking data, and is the first of its kind capable of spotting planets orbiting suns outside our solar system. Project 1640 creates “dark holes” around stars of interest, ultimately allowing direct imaging of planets that orbit them. See article.
g Cosmicus - On May 29, a bus-sized asteroid sped past the Earth in the sixth-closest approach on record. Dubbed 2012 KT42, the asteroid crossed the orbits of weather and television satellites only 22,000 miles above our planet's surface. 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.