Things You Didn't Know About ... Aliens 1 Astronomers Margaret Turnbull and Jill Tarter of the Carnegie Institution in Washington , D.C., have compiled a list of 17,129 nearby stars most likely to have planets that could support complex life. 2 According to Turnbull, stars must be at least 3 billion years old (to allow life time to evolve), have low mass, and have high levels of iron; metals are needed to form rocky, Earth like planets. 3 Leading the list is Epsilon Indi A, a dim orange star just 11.8 light-years away, in our local corner of the Milky Way. 4 What's the frequency, Frank? Astronomer Frank Drake made the first scientific attempt to contact alien beings in 1960, when he used an 85-foot radio dish at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia to listen for signals from two nearby sun like stars. 5 You haven't heard about it because his search turned up zilch. 6 The more sophistic...
Comments
Post a Comment