Life in the universe is a fascinating topic. The simplest question: Are we alone? It breeds so many deeper and more profound scientific questions, like “How many habitable planets are there?” “How likely is life to develop on any given planet?” and “How long can a civilization survive?” We can’t answer them definitively, but we can narrow it down. The Drake equation, shown above, was first developed by Frank Drake, the head of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), in 1961. He took the question of are we alone and made it quantifiable, in a probabilistic way. It lets us...
It’s always funny explaining astronomical time to a non-scientist. I often get the craziest looks when I mention a million years as being a ‘blip on the radar.’ Perhaps there is some immortal alien race out there who would understand how nothing much happens on the scale of the universe in a million years. To humanity and our ever-accelerating advancement, a million years is thrice the age of our entire species. But I guess Einstein was right when he said that ‘it’s all relative.’ This brings us to Saturn, a planet as ancient as the solar system. Moderately old in...
Sometimes I love to say ‘I told you so,’ though in the world of science it’s more like ‘I gave you a high probability of this plausible scenario.’ A little while back a story broke about a star called KIC 8462852, with a strange ring of material surrounding it. One potential explanation was that an extraterrestrial civilization has constructed a giant ring to harvest it’s home star’s energy. Though this was one of a dozen possible explanations, it of course gathered the most steam among the general populace. In a statement today, officials from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) confirmed that...
