Devin Lally Dr. Aaron Titus FYS 1100 Final Essay: Drake Equation The Drake Equation is a theorized equation used to estimate the number of intelligent, radio-communicative life in the Milky Way galaxy. The Drake Equation was written in 1961 by Frank Drake soon before he was going to attend and present at the “search for extraterrestrial intelligence” meeting or SETI. Drake pointed an 85 foot telescope1 at nearby stars and hoped for a response (Scoles). There are eight different variables in the Drake Equation. Each variable leads to the essential question of are we alone in the universe? To describe this equation to its full potential, it is important to look at each factor considered. To start, N is the variable that portrays the number …show more content…
The first term, R*, is the rate at which stars in the galaxy form. If I were to take an educated guess on the numerical number associated with R*, it would be approximately one. Originally, Dr. Frank Drake thought R* was closer to 10. When astronomers looked further, they discovered that it is much more difficult to find a star that is exactly what we need when discovering possible habitable planets to go along with it. When coming up with this number, astronomers must first take a general population number of the surrounding stars and take into account the size and the life span the star has as well as comparing the given star to others that fit the criteria that they need for a habitable planet. One is an acceptable number of star formations because some stars are not big enough to have habitable planets and some are too large and could burn up too …show more content…
We cannot get close enough to observe with our own eyes, so there are different techniques that can be utilized to garner this information. This part of the equation is characterized as Fp, Fp is the fraction of stars that actually have planets. One method used in the study of potential solar systems is the transit method. This is the dimming of a star which can show a planet passing in front, which in turn proves that a planetary system exists around that star. This example is much like the experiment we did in class that showed the planets passing around the yellow sphere that was lit up inside. We used a device that measured the changing light and planet size as it passes around the sun. Another type of test would be radio velocity, this is performed by shaking the stars to reveal the gravitational pull of the surrounding planets. A telescope was sent into space in 2009 to look more closely at the Milky Way in an attempt to find planets and other solar systems. There is a fairly high chance that a star could have a planet around it and in my opinion, as high as fifty percent or .5. Like our solar system, others are more likely to have planets that are not habitable. If other solar systems are anything like ours, they are bound to have many planets. Not all habitable, but planets none the
Ontario on October 24th, 1986 know around the world as "Drake". Son of Dennis Graham and mother name Sandi Grahm. Drake is Canadian, Ethnicity African-American and Ashkenazi Jewish. Aubrey was a Canadian actor at the start of his famous career. He is referred to for his part as Jimmy Brooks on the well-known Canadian show Degrassi: The Next Generation. He later discharged a famous mixtape with tunes like "Each Girl" and "Best I Ever Had", and proceeded onward to an effective melodic vocation. . Then wanted to move on to bigger things. Drake also known as "Dizzy Drake". Became a rapper, starting his rap career on Myspace at the time when Myspace was active and popular for its Music playlist. Aubrey Drake took advantage of it as he promoted his
Then red dwarf star that was discovered by Michal Gillion and his team with the spencer telescope. Once they discovered this star that is a lot small and colder than our sun, it allowed them to get a vision of the seven planets. The star is about 40 light years away. There are not 3 or four planets but there are 7 earth like planets.
R* is the average rate of formation for suitable stars. A suitable star must have an appropriate temperature (i.e. not too hot or cold). It is possible to use the average rate for the galaxy. This can get a bit hazy, as the
A red dwarf star’s HZ, for example, would be much closer to the star itself compared with that of our sun. It is also important to determine the planet’s size and mass, which is imperative in deciding whether it can sustain an atmosphere. Maintaining an atmosphere is essential for life to exist and small a planet with a small gravitational force at its surface may not be capable of retaining one. The Kepler transit data can only measure planet masses, diameters, orbital periods, and parent star types and although this information is useful for determining habitable zones, further data is required to determine true habitability. The latter can be done by studying the composition of the exoplanet’s atmosphere.
If I could be a superhero for a day I would be DC's, Red Robin before the new 52. I like the backstory of Red Robin before the new 52, but I love the custom for the new 52 version of him. Red Robin or Timothy Jackson Drake is a unique character to me. Timothy at a young age was considered a genius. He is also a better detective than even Batman himself. He is praised by Ra Al Ghul and was given the nickname "Detective" which was the nickname Ra used for Batman. He found out Batman and Robin's secret identity when he was nine years old. He also is on par with Oracle or Barbara Gordon's computer and hacking skills. He decided to dedicate his custom to the "fallen" second robin, Jason Todd, who was murdered by the hands of the Joker. Timothy
I am very interested in pursuing a college degree and earning the Prairie Meadows scholarship would help me greatly on the path to my future. Receiving this scholarship would make it more feasible to attend the school I would like to attend. Drake university is a private college so it is more expensive than other state schools. I want to go to drake because I really enjoy the trumpet professor and facilities Drake has. This would help provide me with the things I need to be successful in a music major.
The Milky Way in which we live in is expanding 3.25 million light years per second (Moskowitz). By the time you finish reading this paper, the Milky Way will have expanded by 1.9 million light years. This might be a lot but the closest galaxy to the Milky Way is 13.2 billion light years away. This means there is a chance extra-terrestrial life might exist by the time you finish reading this paper. While saying this, the galaxy is made up of two hundred billion stars in which NASA has discovered. Each of these stars has at least one planet orbiting it. By saying this if the Sun has one habitable planet orbiting it, what is the chance of another star having a habitable planet circling it? Peter Behroozi, a Hubble fellow at the University of California Berkley talks about this issue, “For every grain of sand there is, there are ten other planets out there like Earth” (Cofield). Astronomers have only seen our galaxy, and there are galaxies larger than the Milky Way and more
The Kepler Mission (NASA Discover mission #10) is designed to survey a portion of the Milky Way galaxy to discover Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of our galaxy’s billions of stars have such planets. Results from this mission will allow the placing of our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the galaxy.
The main searches for exoplanets are being done by space missions. The Kepler space mission is finding the most exoplanets, however there are many other space missions like Gaia, MOST, CoRoT, and SWEEPS, that are finding exoplanets in habitable zones. There are also ground missions including the Anglo Australian Planet Search and HARPS which is done in Geneva. This graph shows all the exoplanets found that are less than 10Me or 1.5Re mapped on the habitable zone. The sizes of the circles indicate the radius of the planet, which has been estimated, if not
As mentioned previously, planets are extremely faint light sources compared to stars and what little light comes from them tends to be lost in the glare from their parent star. So in general, it is very difficult to detect and resolve them directly from their host star. Planets orbiting far enough from stars to be resolved reflect very little starlight so planets are detected through their thermal emission instead. It is easier to obtain images when the star system is relatively near to the Sun, the planet is especially large (considerably larger than Jupiter), widely separated from its parent star, and hot so that it emits intense infrared radiation; the images have then been made at infrared where the planet is brighter than it is at visible
The radial velocity method was used to detect the first exoplanet, 51 Pegasi b (51 Peg b) around a main sequence star, 51 Pegasi (51 Peg). The radial velocity method uses the variations in velocity of a star due to the gravitational pull from an exoplanet (Lissauer 2002). Furthermore the velocity isn’t measured in terms of actual speed but in terms of light based on the Doppler effect. The Doppler effect occurs when a star moves. When it moves toward us, its wavelengths of light are shortened and when a star moves away from us, its wavelengths of light are lengthened. Through the continued observation of the Doppler effect on a stars spectrum of light, the velocity of a star is inferred. Any change in a stars velocity is caused by a sufficiently massive companion, an exoplanet (Lissaeur 2002).
The solar system was created 4.6 billion years ago by a gravitational collapse. A solar system is a star that has planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and meteoroids travel around it. The solar system contains eight known planets which are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. There is around several hundred dwarf plants but only five are currently recognized. The solar system has about 181 moons which orbit around the planets in the solar system. There is also about 150 million asteroids and 3,406 comets also in the solar system.
Among the billions of stars in each galaxy, many have planets that revolve around them. At least a few are bound to be of the right size and have the correct spatial orientation with respect to their star to allow life to grow. We believe this because life exists on the Earth. Astronomers have concluded that there must be hundreds of billions of other stars with conditions approximating those of the sun. Therefore there could be a million earth like planets with advanced civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy alone (Stilley). It is very probable that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
To begin with, there is more than one sun out there in space, and a sun can contain about one million planets in space. Scientists have discovered about one thousand planets orbiting distant stars. They have much more to discover! There is a big possibility that in one of those planets life could exist. Another big clue that scientist have discovered is that there are many galaxies in space and we live in one. The galaxy that Earth is located at is called the Milky Way Galaxy. A galaxy can contain many planets just like our galaxy can contains over billions of planets.
"A planet is a celestial body that revolves around a central star and does not shine by its own light " (Grolier, 1992). The only planetary system that is known to man is our