Welcome! "Alien Life" tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. Here's today's news:
g Life - Scientists have identified microbial life in a lake trapped under the frozen ice sheet of Antarctica. For their discovery, the team drilled through 800 meters of ice covering Lake Whillans to collect samples. See article.
g Message - Professor Peter Smith, the University of Arizona expert who led NASA's Phoenix Mars Mission, predicts that at least basic forms of life would be discovered within the next decade. Microbes and bacteria were, thus far, the best bet, he said. See article.
g Cosmicus - Curiosity has used its drill to bore into a flat rock on Mars and collect a sample from its interior. The rock could hold evidence about long-gone wet environments, providing astrobiologists with new insight into the potential for past life on the red plant. 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.