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After Sir Isaac Newton died, his hair was examined and found to have contained mercury, probably resulting from his alchemical pursuits. Many historians believe that this probable mercury poisoning could explain his eccentric behavior in his later life.
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The big four artificial sweeteners – Saccharine, Cyclamate, Aspartame and Sucralose – were all discovered after scientists accidentally tasted the chemicals. Saccharine was discovered in 1879 by Constantin Fahlberg, who was researching coal tar derivatives and forgot to wash his hands before going for lunch. Cyclamate (Sweet ‘n’ Low) was discovered in 1937 when graduate […]
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A professor ran a long running study on a pitch drop missed every single drop. One in 1977 because he went home tired, another in 1988 because he went to get a cup of tea, and in 2000 due to a malfunctioned webcam. When the next drop finally fell in 2014, he had died 8 […]
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Leona Woods was the only woman physicist on the team which built the world’s first nuclear reactor as part of the Manhattan Project. She became a mother during the Project but hid her pregnancy as not to miss work. Afterwards as a professor, she authored >200 papers in physics and astrophysics.
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When his father died of a heart attack, Ronald Mallett resolved to discover time travel to see him again. He went on to earn a PhD in physics and become a professor, and has been working on plans for a time machine ever since.
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In 1911, physicist George de Hevesy suspected his landlady was bulking up his meals with leftovers; he proved it by sprinkling radioactive material over his dinner and detecting it in the next day’s portion.
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We’ve all wondered–could there be, not just life, but intelligent life, out there?
And while relative intelligence of life on Earth could be debatable, two scientists from the University of Nottingham have a new theory that suggests there is.
36 different potential civilizations, to be exact.
Image credit: NASA via Rawpixel
How can scientists possibly make a prediction about the number of undiscovered civilizations?
It’s a mathematical theory based on a fifty-year-old equation called the Drake equation.
As Popular Mechanics explains:
Drake’s seven key variables, which range from how many habitable planets exoplanets there are in the galaxy to the amount of time over which intelligent life takes shape, are almost impossible to pin down.
The formula acts more like a framework for the probability of finding life; previous estimates have ranged from zero to over a billion civilizations.
But Professor of Astrophysics Christopher Conselice, his colleague Tom Westby, and their team at the University of Nottingham used new technology and assumptions about our galaxy, the Milky Way, to formulate a new hypothesis.
They published their work last summer in The Astrophysical Journal.
Image credit: NASA via Rawpixel
As quoted in Phys.org, Conselice explains that they based their assumption on the length of time it took a civilization to develop on Earth:
“There should be at least a few dozen active civilizations in our Galaxy under the assumption that it takes 5 billion years for intelligent life to form on other planets, as on Earth.
The idea is looking at evolution, but on a cosmic scale. We call this calculation the Astrobiological Copernican Limit.”
The Copernican limit guides researchers to think on a pretty large scale–where intelligent life develops in either more or less than 5 billion years.
By intelligent life, scientists mean a civilization capable of communication.
On Earth, that development took more than 4.5 billion years, thus the 5 billion year threshold.
Image credit: NASA via Rawpixel
These calculations have been used for years, but the Nottingham team took it one step further, factoring in the specific composition of Earth’s sun.
As Westby explained:
“In the strong criteria, whereby a metal content equal to that of the Sun is needed (the Sun is relatively speaking quite metal rich), we calculate that there should be around 36 active civilizations in our Galaxy.”
When all of the data is combined and analyzed, they believe just 36 exoplanets possess all the right conditions to support the development of an alien civilization.
Of course that means 36 alien civilizations that are enough like us to be recognizable as communicative beings.
Who knows how many are out there that are so different that we might not even recognize them if we saw them.
The problem is, a theory needs to be proven, and the exoplanets are so far away that while we can see them with high powered telescopes and gather some sensory data on them, we don’t yet have the technology to visit them–even with probes.
Image credit: NASA via Rawpixel
If they’re so far away, why do we even care?
Well aside from the intrinsic human need to explore and discover, finding out how many other civilizations co-exist could actually tell us something about how long life on earth will last.
As Professor Conselice points out:
If we find that intelligent life is common then this would reveal that our civilization could exist for much longer than a few hundred years, alternatively if we find that there are no active civilizations in our Galaxy it is a bad sign for our own long-term existence.
By searching for extraterrestrial intelligent life—even if we find nothing—we are discovering our own future and fate
This is very exciting in the world of astronomy.
But according to Popular Mechanics and The Guardian, not every scientist is convinced.
Oliver Shorttle of the University of Cambridge told the news organization that more factors need to be considered—such as how exactly life formed on Earth—before taking the new findings as fact.
That’s science for you. There’s always more to consider.
Even so, it’s pretty cool to have such a specific number, don’t you think?
Do you believe there’s life out there? Let us know your theories in the comments!
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In the early 1940s a Mexican scientist named Guillermo Gonzalez Camarena created a color television system some considered better than any American system at the time. His work made it possible in the 1970s for NASA to transmit color photos of Jupiter from the Voyager satellite.
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After losing her position in her university’s anatomy department in 1938, Rita Levi-Montalcini set up a laboratory in her bedroom and studied the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos. This work led to her discovery of nerve growth factor, for which she was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1986.
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Henry Cavendish, noted for his discovery of hydrogen, was a “notoriously shy man”. He communicated with his female servants only by notes. By one account, Cavendish had a back staircase added to his house to avoid encountering his housekeeper.
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