The Drake Equation is meant to predict the number of civilizations comparable to Earth out in the Milky Way Galaxy . It was first proposed by Dr. Frank Drake in 1961. However, because we don’t currently know how many stars are actually in the milky way (we can only use a number from the observable universe we see), this equation only provides a rough estimate of civilizations comparable to Earth. This equation takes into consideration the rate of formation stars suitable for the development of intelligent life, and out of those the ones with an environment suitable for life, and out of those the ones that actually have life, and out of those the ones where the beings of the planet develop some sort of intelligence, and out of those the ones that develop some sort of communication method, and out of those the ones that are able to transmit signals into space.
The Drake Equation allows for a detailed analysis and process of elimination, but the controversy arises when others begin to question if these 7 variables are total encompassing of what other planets with life forms should have. The question also does not eliminate bias because the astronomer who is calculating a number has to estimate some of the variables and depending on whether they are more pessimistic or more realistic, their findings will vary.
Given that NASA is a government agency, it’s a little worrisome how it’s funding can be pretty wantonly taken and given as the government sees fit. (That’s why privatization of the space industry through companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX is so necessary) However, Nasa is currently budgeted .5% of our national budget- that’s 18.4 billion-so I wanted to check in to see how our government money is being spent. Evidentially, we have much to look forward to.
On the home front, NASA is launching two satellite missions (ICE-Sat 2 and Grace follow-on) to catalogue the long-term changes of Earth’s climate. With a focus on movement of ice and sea level fluctuations, the data from these missions could provide key insight into how humans are affecting the Earth via global warming.
On the topic of humans, NASA is also studying the humans already living on the International Space Station. By researching the effects of long-term time spent in space (six months or longer) NASA is hinting towards preparation for longer missions involving humans being sent into deep space.
The International Space Center
Currently, Exploration Mission-1 is going to be the first test of said deep exploration system, which will be a crewless flight of SLS and Orion. In the long term, the Orion Spacecraft will be launched with crew and equipment to the moon, where astronauts will then build systems that will allow us to reach farther destinations such as Mars and eventually deep space. However, this second stage (Exploration Mission-2) has been pushed back from its targeted 2021 launch to a 2023 deadline.
In the meantime, we can look forward to data from the Insight Mars lander and Mars 2020 rover as well as hope to discover new exoplanets from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Sampler.
After already having done research on the Drake equation and its implications for extra-solar life, the next question begs to be answered. If there really are so many earth-like planets out there that may have evolved intelligent life, why haven’t we heard from any of them? This is the underlying question that lies behind a complex scientific question originally posed by Enrico Fermi, now known as the Fermi paradox. Given the assumptions that there are billions of sun-like stars with earth-like planets that may have also developed interstellar travel, why haven’t we had any visitors? (Or for that matter, why haven’t they sent us any postcards?)
That’s the paradox- with the supposedly high odds that there is intelligent life, why has there so far been zero communication between them and Earth? I’ll preface this section by saying that so far there is no agreed upon explanation, but there are a myriad of theories- most of them slightly dismal. The first, most basic, and in my opinion, least plausible is that no other intelligent life has arisen in the universe. While this does answer the paradox, it’s also incredibly self aggrandizing to suggest that we are simply the first civilization to become intelligent. Therefore, I don’t buy it.
Another explanation along those lines is that intelligent species have developed in the universe, but they lack the technology to communicate with or travel to us. Granted, this also seems unlikely. Recalling that there are many sun-like stars much older (in the billions of years) than our own and that as a civilization it took us about 50,000 years to develop space technology from the point of achieving intelligence, it seems unlikely that in the grand scheme of things the other intelligent civilizations have not progressed to or beyond our level of technology.
So then, if the technology is there, the possible paradox answers become a bit darker. One explanation is that more intelligent species are “hiding” from another predatory species by not broadcasting any signals, and therefore we’re the idiots practically flashing a neon sign to come get us. Another spooky theory is that Earth is deliberately not being contacted because we exist as an experiment- a “zoo” of sorts to be observed by more intelligent life. That’s the Zoo hypothesis, and the same idea ties into another idea called Planetarium Hypothesis, which states that this Earth and universe may be a simulation created by a higher form of life with the purposeful intention of having it appear empty of other life. These explanations lead us to a reassessment of reality itself.
What if we’re just off-limits?
My personal most logical explanation is that we have over-estimated how similar extraterrestrial life may be to life on earth. The only ways that we as a species can perceive life is through light, sound, touch, smell and taste, and we are broadcasting radio signals and sending out physical satellites to other worlds assuming the same. But the question stands: what if other intelligent civilizations have completely different ways of perceiving information, meaning that communication between our two species is inherently impossible until we can find a way to translate the information?
The most mind-boggling part of the Fermi Paradox is that these are only a few of the explanations being posed. The fact that our most gifted scientists and thinkers are left scratching their heads and posing philosophical questions regarding the nature of reality in itself is incredibly humbling. In my opinion, this paradox is the is the most important question being asked in the intellectual community today. Maybe we never will receive an answer until we can find a way to translate alien communication, maybe we just exist as an experiment, or maybe, just maybe, our young 50,000 years simply hasn’t been long enough to receive information from a society that exists in the far reaches of our galaxy. All we can do is keep looking and listening and asking why we haven’t gotten to introduce ourselves yet.
NASA launched the two Voyager missions in 1977. On these two missions was something different though. Voyager 1 and 2 both possessed a record and a record player as a way to contact with any potential intelligent life that the missions come across. So what exactly is on these records? The answer is a lot. NASA packed quite a lot of information into this record and each item has a specific purpose.
The silhouette of a man and a pregnant woman are featured so that aliens could observe the human anatomy. DNA is etched into the disk to show what our (an perhaps the aliens’) genetic code is stored in. In order to show how we receive nutrients, NASA included a picture of a man drinking water, a man eating a sandwich and a woman licking a scoop of ice cream. Interestingly, NASA also included a picture of Olympic sprinters as well because it held a lot of information including the different races of humans, the muscles in the human leg, and what competition and entertainment look like on Earth. Architecturally, the Golden Record includes huts, houses and cities, but it also includes more impressive buildings such as the Taj Mahal and the Golden Gate bridge (chosen because it connects two pieces of land separated by water).
Some sounds included on the record included a greeting from 7 year old Nick Sagan (a current American novelist and screenwriter), a whale greeting, a kiss, and my personal favorite item: the song “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry. Additionally, the record includes greetings from 55 different spoken languages.
While I did include some items from the Golden Record, I was not able to mention most of them. For pictures and a list of all of the images on the Golden Record, click here and for further information about the 90 minute selection of music that the record offers, click here. Here is the link if you also want to listen to greetings from 55 languages and here is the link if you are interested in listening to the 21 Earth sounds included in the record.
With all of the information that is included on these records, if it reaches intelligent life I am curious to know whether or not the vast amount of information within this disk will educate or overwhelm aliens.
NASA launched the two Voyager missions in 1977. On these two missions was something different though. Voyager 1 and 2 both possessed a record and a record player as a way to contact with any potential intelligent life that the missions come across. So what exactly is on these records? The answer is a lot. NASA packed quite a lot of information into this record and each item has a specific purpose.
The silhouette of a man and a pregnant woman are featured so that aliens could observe the human anatomy. DNA is etched into the disk to show what our (an perhaps the aliens’) genetic code is stored in. In order to show how we receive nutrients, NASA included a picture of a man drinking water, a man eating a sandwich and a woman licking a scoop of ice cream. Interestingly, NASA also included a picture of Olympic sprinters as well because it held a lot of information including the different races of humans, the muscles in the human leg, and what competition and entertainment look like on Earth. Architecturally, the Golden Record includes huts, houses and cities, but it also includes more impressive buildings such as the Taj Mahal and the Golden Gate bridge (chosen because it connects two pieces of land separated by water).
Some sounds included on the record included a greeting from 7 year old Nick Sagan (a current American novelist and screenwriter), a whale greeting, a kiss, and my personal favorite item: the song “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry. Additionally, the record includes greetings from 55 different spoken languages.
While I did include some items from the Golden Record, I was not able to mention most of them. For pictures and a list of all of the images on the Golden Record, click here and for further information about the 90 minute selection of music that the record offers, click here. Here is the link if you also want to listen to greetings from 55 languages and here is the link if you are interested in listening to the 21 Earth sounds included in the record.
With all of the information that is included on these records, if it reaches intelligent life I am curious to know whether or not the vast amount of information within this disk will educate or overwhelm aliens.
You’ve heard of black holes, right? Well, how about white holes? White holes are theoretically the exact opposite of black hole, and scientists think that they could make up a large portion of the dark matter in the universe. Where nothing can escape a black hole’s event horizon, nothing can enter a white hole’s. It is thought that black holes and white holes are connect and that matter/energy that falls into a black hole may emerge from a white hole somewhere in the universe, or maybe, another universe entirely.
Another thought is that maybe when black holes die, they turn into white holes. Stephen Hawking thought that black holes evaporate mass by emitting radiation, and eventually they would vanish. However, scientists insist that black holes cannot vanish if space-time is quantum, which is assumed when we try to create a single theory uniting general relativity and quantum mechanics. Because of this, it is thought that black holes would vanish until they couldn’t be squeezed into anything smaller, and would be turned into a white hole. If this is true, could this be a key to traveling throughout the universe or multi-verse?
Despite being the most abundant form of life on Earth, viruses and their dormant state known as virions, are often left out the conversation in identifying life outside this place. However, a group of scientists are now calling for this to change. Noting that the term virus is only used six times within NASA’s 250-paged astrobiology strategy, the authors of a recent paper Astroviroligy: Viruses at Large in the Universe have called for the study of viruses to be incorporated into future missions for extraterrestrial life. Ken Stedman, a virologist at Portland State University and coauthor of the paper, says “If we are going to be thinking about life on early Earth or ancient or current life on other planets, we need to be thinking about viruses,” highlighting the integral role that viruses play within life on Earth.
While initially being solely viewed as a tiny disease-causing agent, viruses are now understood to being far more complex. While not alive in the sense that viruses cannot reproduce on their own, the virus genome replicates within living cells, before transferring the genome to other cells. The dormant seed-like virion also need to encounter living cells in order to become a virus and replicate. Being such important components of life here on Earth, the discovery of viruses and virions on other planets could provide significant evidence of present, or past, cellular life.
With viruses believed to outnumber cellular life forms by a factor of 10, and virions to be even more bountiful (one teaspoon of seawater is thought to contain over 50 million virions), it seems logical to include the entities most abundant in a search for terrestrial life. These scientists believe that the issue has been a lack of push from virologists in telling NASA the significance of searching for virions. These scientists recognize the difficulty in finding non-celled organisms, particularly due to there lack of by-product creation, however they see an opportunity where viruses may change the metabolism, and therefore, by-products of infected hosts. This would have the impact of having such viruses acting as a proxy for detecting cellular life as it would be easier to identify living organisms from Earth. This group of scientists believe that future missions to search for viruses and virions, at locations such as Jupiter’s moons Europa and Enceladus, could provide important breakthroughs.
The famous Fermi paradox asks a famous question: considering calculations that say we probably should have encountered extraterrestrial forms of life by now, why have we not?
We wonder about the existence of intelligent life in the Universe other than our own. It is only natural, considering our own species’ discussion about possible colonization of the Universe. Perhaps another life form will attempt to colonize the worlds of the Universe—whether to explore, or survive. Considering that our Sun has a finite lifetime, if humans are still around in 5 billion years we might do the same, simply out of necessity for survival as a species.
The Drake’s equation takes into account a variety of factors to consider how many intelligent civilizations may exist in the Universe. These factors are: rate of star formation, fraction of those stars that have planets, average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets, fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life, fraction of the above that develop intelligent life, fraction of the above capable of interstellar communication, and expected lifetime of such a civilization.
Drake and his colleagues estimated in 1961 that based on these factors, there should be about ten civilizations in our galaxy alone. So the question arose: where are the aliens? Today, more pessimistic measures are used to calculate the probable frequency of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, bringing the estimate down to about 0.08 civilizations in just our galaxy.
Since the inception of ride share companies like Uber and Lyft, environmental critics have argued that these companies simply put more cars on the road, leading to increased carbon in the atmosphere. They claim that this would lead to greater air pollution. Also, many complained that an increase in these services would lessen the amount who use public transportation, which is the more environmentally friendly option.
However, Lyft has made a pledge to become carbon-neutral just this week. This means that they will aim to track the amount of carbon produced from their drivers by reviewing routs and car type. However, they will not account for the actual manufacture of the cars.
They are going about this by working with a company called 3Degrees, from whom they will purchase carbon credits. This means that for every bit of carbon produced by Lyft, 3Degrees will replace that carbon by either planting trees or directly catching carbon pollution from entering the air. This relates to our course because of our unit on climate change and how the atmosphere is affected by different gases.
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The basis of the Fermi Paradox is that the probability of another intelligent civilization existing in the universe is so high considering the number of stars and the fact that each star has on average one planet, but this means that the probability of us finding evidence for such is also so high.
The Drake equation is the leading equation used for calculating the number of communicative civilizations in our galaxy. It has 7 variables that are all pretty vague and replaceable, which makes the result of the equation very controversial among astronomers. While the equation itself makes sense, there are many different numbers that could make sense for each variable.
Many scientists have picked apart each variable to claim the flaw in this paradox. For example, some claim that some parts of the Milky Way Galaxy are more habitable than others. Additionally, scientists have claimed that we have no way to really calculate the total number of habitable worlds considering our limited telescopic sight.
Despite the controversy, the Fermi Paradox raises a really interesting point about life beyond Earth. And perhaps beneath this paradox lies a future explanation for why we have not encountered an alien species.
