Category Archives: Aliens

The Drake Equation and its Implications

     I’ve always wondered if there was life like humans in space, and thanks to the Drake equation, I’m now 99.9% sure there are multiple alien civilizations as advanced, if not more advanced, than us in our own galaxy. The Drake Equation hypothesizes that the number of alien civilizations that can communicate can be calculated with […] Continue reading

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The Most Extreme Extremophile

An extremophile is an organism which is able to survive in the harshest of conditions. Acidophiles thrive in very acidic conditions, thermophiles thrive in environments with extremely high temperatures, psychrophiles thrive in very very low temperatures. There are many other types of extremophiles, one for every type of harsh environment in which organisms thrive in. […] Continue reading

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The Drake Equation

The Drake equation is a mathematical formula used to estimate the number of potential intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy. It was first proposed by astronomer Frank Drake in 1961, and has since become a widely used tool in the search for extraterrestrial life. The equation takes into account several factors that are believed […] Continue reading

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The Drake Equation

The idea of life on other planets has always been a hot topic. An entire genre has been developed to showcase aliens stemming from human imagination. This is usually pseudoscience, but it does beg the question: are aliens real? While we have never contacted or found evidence of other civilizations, there is a way to […] Continue reading

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I want to belive.. but I can’t!

As I do so often, I would like to talk about the possibility of extraterrestrial life within the Universe. I will take this last blog as an opportunity to reflect on the things which I have been able to learn from the course as a whole as it relates to one of the topics I […] Continue reading

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The (Possible) Oceans of Europa

Among all of Earth’s unique aspects and characteristics, the presence of water may be the most significant. Water is necessary to life as we know it; from humans ourselves down to microscopic organisms, all living things need water to survive. It is no wonder, then, that life in the Solar System is exclusive to Earth; […] Continue reading

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Voyager 1 and the Golden Records

Voyager 1 is the farthest human-made object from Earth (Space.com). Voyager 1 is a space probe, launched in 1977 with the mission to explore the outer planets of the Solar System. Voyager 2, its twin probe, was actually launched first, with a slower, more meandering trajectory past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Voyager 1 soon […] Continue reading

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Life Beyond Earth

There have been many recent discoveries that suggest life exists beyond Earth. Some of these include new findings on Enceladus (a small moon of Saturn), exoplanets, and even Mars. Enceladus NASA’s Cassini spacecraft collected data that allowed us to simulate the geochemistry of phosphorus in the ocean. This study helped us reach some interesting conclusions […] Continue reading

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We Come in Peace! (If you can Find Us)

It’s a common theme for me within this class to fixate on the possibility of life beyond Earth, and I’m glad to do that once again with today’s blog post. I want to respond to the book’s claim that life on Mars is an “extraordinary claim”. While it’s true the bold assertion like the one […] Continue reading

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Scale and Travel Times

At this very moment, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is hurtling through space at about 61,500 km/h each and every hour, carrying it ever further from our Solar system which it left 18 years ago. But despite this staggering speed, it would still take Voyager more than 75,000 years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. […] Continue reading

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