Are We Alone In The Universe (7 of 22)

Are We Alone In The Universe

Everything else in the equation, from the number of stars with planets to the number of planets per star capable of supporting life, was a total mystery.
But over the years, it hasn't stopped people from guessing.
This is our number N.
The number of technical civilisations in the galaxy.
Into the now famous, or infamous, Drake equation goes everything, from astrophysics, through evolutionary biology to whatever it is that governs the lifetime of a detectable civilisation.
Not surprisingly, no-one's solved it yet, but anyone can have a go.
It 's almost a game the whole family can play.

If you sort of take the average of people's guesses, it gives you a total number of detectable civilisations, which is about 10,000.
A big number.
And yet with no call from ET, and no sign of another Earth, Drake's guess seemed wildly optimistic.
When I was a child, I was living in We spent evenings with my sister laying down on the grass and looking at the sky.
And that's really good for the imagination.
I'm sure there are other Earths similar to our own Earth.
And on some of them, you even may have life developing.
Professor Stephane Udry is part of a Swiss team of planet hunters who began searching for life-bearing planets in the mid-'90s.
They had developed a new planet detector, which had just been installed at their observatory in central France.
When you have a new instrument, you want to check the short-term precision of the instrument.