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 - An analysis of a rock sample collected by NASA's Curiosity rover shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes. The sample came from sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed and contained some of the key chemical ingredients for life. See article.
g Life - Last week, reports began to emerge that scientists had discovered a previously unknown bacteria in samples from Antarctica’s Lake Vostok. Word quickly spread throughout the blogosphere, but the bacteria in question is likely just a contaminant. See article.
g Message - Book alert: In “Is Anyone Out There?”, by Frank Drake, Dava Sobel, University of California astronomy and astrophysics professor Drake, aided by science journalist Sobel, responds to the title's classic question with an account of his career-long quest to gamer hard scientific data that might point to some answers. One of America's pioneer radio astronomers, Drake provides firsthand descriptions of breakthrough moments in the past 30 years of astrophysics - no encounters of any kind, just straightforward astrophysics with inconclusive experimental results. Drake's medium is science, his theory technical and his slightly anthropocentric conclusions more modest than those of the average UFO abductee.
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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.