Category Archives: Aliens

Is Extra-Terrestrial Communication a Good Thing?

We have talked in class about sending out signals and messages to other potential other civilizations to let them know that we are here, but should we really be doing that? It’s open for debate. Frank Drake himself found “Active SETI to be, at best, a stunt and generally a waste of time.” (Source). To […] Continue reading

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Contact: The Third Answer to Fermi’s Paradox

The Fermi paradox posits that there are only three possible answers to the question “Where is everybody?” in terms of the search for other intelligent life in the Universe. The three possibilities are as follows: We are alone Civilizations are common, but no one has colonized the galaxy There is a galactic civilization, but it […] Continue reading

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Contact: The Third Answer to Fermi’s Paradox

The Fermi paradox posits that there are only three possible answers to the question “Where is everybody?” in terms of the search for other intelligent life in the Universe. The three possibilities are as follows: We are alone Civilizations are common, but no one has colonized the galaxy There is a galactic civilization, but it …

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Drake Equation

One of the most interesting things that we have covered this semester is the Drake Equation. This equation uses probability to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy. What I like most about this … Continue reading Continue reading

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Where is everyone?

This past couple weeks, we spent time looking in-depth at the Drake equation, a hypothetical equation that uses estimation to “calculate” how many communicating civilizations there likely should be within any one galaxy. Using accepted values for each variable within the Drake equation, this number is roughly 30 for one galaxy. That number multiplied by the […] Continue reading

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God the Engineer of Life?

In Lawrence M. Krauss’s piece in the New Yorker, No, Astrobiology Has Not Made the Case for God, he responds to an article entitled Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God published in the Wall Street Journal by Eric Metaxas. In Metaxas’ piece, he writes about how miraculous and statistically infinitesimal the likelihood that life […] Continue reading

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The Drake Equation

  The Drake Equation has been one of the most interesting things that I have learned about so far in this course. The video I have linked above does a very good job summarizing the different parts of the Drake Equation and how they are calculated. Towards the end of the video, it also talks … Continue reading The Drake Equation Continue reading

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The Drake Equation

  The Drake Equation has been one of the most interesting things that I have learned about so far in this course. The video I have linked above does a very good job summarizing the different parts of the Drake Equation and how they are calculated. Towards the end of the video, it also talks … Continue reading The Drake Equation Continue reading

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Psychrophile Style

Among the many types of extremophiles that can live in extreme conditions, psychrophiles are microorganisms that thrive in cold environments. We actually have a lot of psychrophiles in a variety of landscapes throughout Earth, including Anthrobacter, a bacteria found in soil, and Psychrobacter, which can live in many sets of conditions and can cause human ailments. […] Continue reading

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Detection of Habitable Planets

We talked much in class about different methods of discovering extrasolar planets, and Dr. G pointed out to us that the only reason people bother looking for extrasolar planets is to try and find life outside of our solar system.  To do this, scientists have to narrow down the list of extrasolar planets into a […] Continue reading

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