Intelligent Life in Space

I read the book Intelligent Life in Space by Frank D. Drake as a book length source for my topic. The book talks about the ways which the possibility of alien communication has come to, and the recent discoveries and technical developments. Drake also includes the efforts scientists make toward reaching and contacting another alien civilization. He also doesnt leave out the beginings of stars and planets and how life can come about on a planet like Earth. This book has a little bit of everything.

Drake really did a great job in writing this book. He puts everything into perspective and its really easy to follow. He adds real photos taken by telescopes to really give you an idea of what the Andromeda galaxy or what a star cloud looks like. Drake really makes it seem that he has been all around the universe and back with all of the information packed into his book. He is a great writer.

So the question is, did I find the answer to my question in this book? As the author would say, " In science, the answers are always there to be found. Only sufficient skill and determination are needed to find a path of reserch leading to them"(Drake 13). Also looking at it, the book was published in 1962 so most of the information in here has been updated, or new data is available. Drake did give me a good enough start to know where to start looking for the answer.


Drake, Frank. Intelligent Life in Spac. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1962. Print.

The Search

This week, I read a chapter called "Weighing the Chances of Alien Intelligence". It basically talks about if the possibility of alien life is out there, then how intelligent will they be compared to humans. Scientists are looking for intelligence that can be sentient life. "The term Sentient menas conscious and self aware and implies the ability to use tools to construst a civilization"(50 Nardo). It also throws in a little of Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution involving survival of the fittest. Nardo talks about a lion hunting. If he has good enough intelligence, he will be able to kill and bring food back to the pack and have a greater chance at mating with a female lion and pass on the genes of intelligence.

I think this chapter was a wierd one. I get the whole ET intelligence part. I couldnt quite pick up on the is it possible that there are life forms that are on our level of science and technology. Most people think alien life forms are ages ahead of us in technology. They can be cavemen for all we know.

Hubble Deep Field

I watched this video called "Are We Alone". The video talks about an image captured by the Hubble Deep Field Telescope. It perhaps, is one of the most important photos taken from space in history. It also talks about the galaxies in the image.

I think this is pretty interesting. The image itself is just amazing. When you look up in the sky at night, you cant see anything like that. It just makes me wonder if life is really out there. The video said, "Each of these galaxies harbor billions of individual stars, and measure tens of thousands of light years across. That is unbelievable.

"Are we Alone." Youtube. Web. 8 Apr 2010.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Life

I recently read a chapter in The Search for Extraterrestrial Life by Don Nardo. In the chapter "Hunting for Earth-Like Planets", Don talks about how NASA and scientists would try to find other life inhabiting planets in the universe. Earth bases telescopes are not strong enough to dectect light from distant planets orbiting stars. Not even the Hubble Space telescope can locate that light. They predict in the near future that they will have the technology to do so. They also estimate the amount of Earth-like planets in our galaxy. They said to assume that there were 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Now, 10% of those stars have orbiting planets. And 20% of the planets in that system have an Earth-like planet. If those statistics were accurate and not made up, that would mean that there would be 2 million terrestrial in our galaxy alone: let alone the universe.

I think this chapter was pretty interesting. I like how the author writes the book into chapters and sections making it similar to a textbook. The information seems pretty reliable. Personally, I think that there could be life inhabitable planets out there. Just the fact that we could be the only civilization in the whole universe seems pretty rediculous.

Nardo,Donn.The Search for Extraterrestrial Life.Farmington Hills, MI:Gale,2006.1-24.Print.