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 - Astronomers have found pristine material in a dust belt around a young star that matches comets in our own solar system. See article.
g Life - Researchers have discovered that a bacterium's ability to withstand toxicity is key to creating 24-karat gold. With this knowledge, they created a multimedia art installation that received an honorable mention at a recent cyber art competition. See article.
g Imagining - Thirty years ago, a different kind of alien hit the screen: a vulnerable, cuddly, candy-munching creature that captured hearts as well as box-office records. Is "E.T." still relevant for the 21st century? If you're looking for the extraterrestrial that humanity is most likely to run into first, E.T. definitely doesn't fit the mold. But if you're looking for the cultural icon that's most likely to motivate the search for honest-to-goodness extraterrestrials, E.T. just might be your A-list alien. 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.