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 - What is the potential habitability of the nearby star system Sirius AB?
g Abodes - A team of scientists has traveled to remote Laguna Negra in the central Andes of Chile to test technologies that could one day be used to explore the lakes of Titan. Astrobiology Magazine's Expeditions Editor, Henry Bortman, provides a first-hand account of their progress. See article.
g Life - New research is helping scientists understand the principles behind the evolution of multicellular organisms. See article.
g Imagining - Could Star Trek’s Caretaker of The Original Series’ “Shore Leave” fame actually evolve? Unfortunately, we know almost nothing about his race with the exception that it is very advanced technologically and quite disciplined mentally. We also know that it appears human, which virtually eliminates it from the realm of possibility, as the parallel evolution on another planet of homo sapiens is extremely unlikely. However, the Caretaker’s kind may not be humanoid at all. Indeed, his race employs machinery that can nearly instantaneously create items based on the readings of one’s thoughts. It’s similar to what the Squire of Gothos and The Next Generation’s Q can do. However, the squire and the Q can achieve this instantaneously, the squire through a machine and the Q through an omnipotent understanding of the universe. Both the squire and the Q also are energy beings. Might the caretaker as well be one (though of a different race than the squire or the Q) and merely took on human form for the landing party’s sake?
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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.