Some people think aliens are a conspiracy theory or an impossibility, but statistically it’s possible that extra-terrestrial life forms (ETs) could exist in our galactic neighborhood.
Aliens probably don’t look like the classic little green men, but something could be out there. What form does our search take? Here’s an overview, with help from our friend Wolf Gordon Clifton, who is currently completing a certificate program in Astrobiology at the University of Washington and is the creator of the exhibit Beyond Human: Animals, Aliens and Artificial Intelligence.
In the 1960s, astronomer Francis Drake took a pragmatic approach to the search for extra-terrestrial life. He tried to find signals broadcast by alien civilizations using radio telescopes. Furthermore, he created the Drake Equation, a formula used to calculate the number of potential civilizations in our galaxy.
Although well respected in the scientific community, the equation is problematic as many of the factors remain unknown. Nonetheless, it can be used to estimate the number of alien civilizations that might exist, based on what we know about our planet and the rest of the universe.
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