How Many Advanced Extraterrestrial Civilizations Are in Our Galaxy Today?
How astronomers calculate this number using the Drake Equation.
How many advanced extraterrestrial civilizations are in our Galaxy today? Believe it or not, there are many astronomers who have tried to estimate an answer. That’s because whether we (intelligent lifeforms) are alone in the Universe is one of the biggest questions in science today. And the most famous approach to answering such questions was by Frank Drake using what’s known today as the Drake Equation. The Drake Equation is often regarded as the second most-famous equation in science, after E=mc². Read on to find out more!
Drake was the first person ever to conduct an experiment searching for signs of advanced alien civilizations. His work, known as Project Ozma, was conducted in 1960 at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Using radio telescopes, he examined electromagnetic radiation emanating from the stars Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti, which are about 10.5 lightyears and 12 lightyears away from our Sun respectively; both stars were Sun-like and were reasonably believed to contain habitable planets.
