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 - Could extraterrestrial life exist on a planet in the Alpha Centauri solar system? See article.
g Abodes - Curiosity has tracked a trail of minerals on Mars that indicates water was once present in Gale Crater on Mars. Curiosity's ChemCam instrument detected veins composed mainly of hydrated calcium sulfate, such as gypsum. On Earth, forming such features requires liquid water. See article.
g Message - Seth Shostak is an astronomer, specifically a radio astronomer. That is, he looks at radio signals coming from space from various cosmic objects. But a while back, he decided to change his focus (haha, get it?) somewhat. He doesn’t look for black holes and galaxies anymore. He looks for aliens.He tell you all about it, in this TEDxSanJose talk he gave in April 2012. 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.