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 - A new study is reinforcing claims that the asteroid Vesta has a layered interior - a quality usually found only in planets and large moons. See article.
g Life - A new study is providing insights into how living organisms use different mechanisms to adapt to their surroundings. The study focuses on two microorganisms that use different techniques to cope with uranium toxicity in their environments. See article.
g Message - First Light Design (Distant Suns) has released version 3.4 of its comprehensive, award-winning Distant Suns Astronomy App for iPad and iPhone - featuring the ability to see the star systems that are being monitored in real-time by the SETI Institute for possible signs of extraterrestrial life. Whenever SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array near Mt Lassen in Northern California is operating, Distant Suns will indicate where the radio telescope's dishes are pointing. The update also includes the ability to show a star's numerical magnitude as well as its Bayer numbers in Greek and Latin, a new detailed, texture map of Mercury, a new Milky Way image, as well as a few bug fixes. 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.